


The High School Life of Isaac O'Connor

by IAmWhelmed



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Blood?, Friendship, Love Triangles, M/M, Possibly Annoying Use of OCs, Possibly Even More Annoying OCs, Romance, Some Odd Form of Slice of High School Life I Suppose, Underage Drinking, alcohol mention, mature language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6899014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmWhelmed/pseuds/IAmWhelmed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that he's graduated from Mayview Middle, Isaac decides it's high time he did things his own way. It's time he went solo. Yeah, maybe he's still holding a flame for Max, even though there's no way that's happening ever. Maybe he's still a little scared of being abandoned, but maybe he can trust these guys? Yeah, he'll settle for a maybe on that one. After all, who's got time to think about the Activity Club when high school is such an odd thing to navigate?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Isaac is Not a Superhero No Matter How Badly He Wants to Be

_I need respect, I need love_  
_Nothing in between_  
_I will not spell it out for you if you can't see_  
_'Cause you're not worthy, you don't deserve me_  
_And now I'm gone_  
_\- Demi Lovato “Everything You’re Not”_

Going solo was probably simultaneously one of the best and worst decisions he’d ever made.

Going solo was great because, let’s face it, he didn’t have to deal with the soul-crushing grief that came with enduring the malice of the club. He chose how to handle every spectral situation he came across- on his own with nobody jumping to using violence. He chose when he went on patrol around his school, which was significantly larger as a high school had to fit more classes and students and teachers, etc. Most of all, he got to choose who he told about being a spectral because Spender had no reign over him anymore and he could kiss his butt. Of course, that wasn’t to say Isaac had actually told anybody. After all, he would run the risk of being sent to the local asylum (which his parents had already considered for him and they didn’t need further incentive). Being a loner opened up a few doors in the ways of communication with spirits, too. Some were much more receptive to reason, having confidence in knowing he had no malign affiliations. If anything, that told Isaac his decision to step away from the activity club was a good idea. Then there was the perk that nobody could keep secrets from him if he wasn’t around to ostracize. Max could go down that road all by himself. He’d made it more than clear Isaac was superfluous in his world. That might change the deeper down the rabbit hole Max would get, but Isaac wouldn’t hold his breath.

Of course, there was a large list of reasons going solo wasn’t the grand endeavor Isaac thought it would be. He’d glorified being a hero, sure, and maybe even assumed he’d make a few friends with a few chatty spirits. More often than not, Isaac found, for every spirit that was willing to listen to him, there were three who just wanted war. Isaac found out fast that it was really freaking hard to fight three-against-one, even with his weather powers and arguably impressive fast mind. Fights that he’d usually walk away from unscathed were leaving him trudging home, covered in bruises and scratches that’d been bleeding but were closed by the time he got to his bed. The following morning he’d find patches of pinks and blues and purples all over his arms and chest and, probably, his back.

Yes, being on a team had made him stronger as an opponent, but that didn’t mean going solo was awful. That’s what he told himself when he started worrying about what the club was doing. Try as he might, he still cared about whether they were having a rough time without him, or if one of them had gotten hurt in a battle with the random spirit of the week. He worried that they were getting into fights they couldn’t win, or combat they’d been trying to avoid for whatever reason. He worried Max was growing increasingly lost every day because Isaac knew how horrible the rest of the club was about explaining anything and everything.

Isaac groaned and glanced out the window beside his bed. His blue curtains gusted in his face with every breeze that passed through his open shutters. The night wasn’t very young anymore; at least it didn’t feel like it. He’d had another one of the “battle it out” nights that he hated so much. The fight against this odd worm-fish-human compound had lasted longer than he’d been expecting it to, especially when he found out it had an entire pond-full of buddies. By the time he’d finished the fight and went to head home, he’d had to sneak in the back door because his parents would be waiting by the front door. _I’ll be getting an earful in the morning._ He’d opened up the window primarily because he thought that the cold wind of the rising winter season would help ease his muscles. He’d been right, kind of. His entire body ached and throbbed where he’d stacked bandages, every pulse sending a sharp pain through his veins. He vaguely wondered if he’d been poisoned. The spirits had the mouths of humans, so it didn’t seem likely, but they had the teeth of an anglerfish and the flexibility of some crude earthworm he could have found in the dirt on any given day. Panic, white hot and sweaty, choked him. If he was poisoned, where would he go? Just to a regular hospital? What if it was some type of ectoplasm thing and they wouldn’t find it in him and they’d think he was faking it? What if they asked questions about his bruises?

Isaac swallowed the lump in his throat and painstakingly twisted so that he was on his side. The wounds were probably just infected, that’s all. He’d just look it up on the internet. His rational side told him that was a stupid idea and he’d be better suited to just ask the school nurse for advice because the internet lies, but he was keen to not draw attention to the wounds he couldn’t hide under clothing or concealer. If worse came to worst, he could always return to the club with his tail between his legs. It wasn’t like he’d parted with them on bad terms. In fact, Spender had reached out to Isaac a few days before summer started to let him know his graduation didn’t mean he was graduating from the club. The conversation was awkward, consisting of nothing but him nodding to every sugar-coated deceitful anecdote Spender could think of, and Isaac walked away from it feeling a little guilty, but he’d decided months beforehand that as soon as graduation day came he was out of there. They’d probably expected him to show up in the clubroom come the first day back to school, but he’d headed as far down the hills of Mayview as he possibly could without getting completely lost. It was surprising that he hadn’t run into any of them, now that they were three months into the new school year. Mayview was a small city. _They’re avoiding me. They didn’t want me around, anyway- this is just proof._ The rational part of him piped up again. It was letting him know they might just figure that he wants his space, which he did. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that none of them had reached out to him. _Seriously, three months. They’re not even worried about me? Maybe I got into it with a spirit I couldn’t handle?_ They’d probably seen him around town without his knowledge and that was why they hadn’t said anything. _Because they didn’t care enough to, doi._ The rational part of him didn’t have a lot to say to that, aside from what Isaac already knew:

He wasn’t doing this for their attention. He wasn’t going solo and getting into trouble that left him with battle scars every night because he wanted them to care that he’s hurt. He wasn’t doing this because he wanted to get a glimpse at a side of them that might prove all of his doubts about their relationship wrong. He wasn’t doing this to piss them off or make them as angry at him as he was with them. He wasn’t even doing it to gain the respect from them he’d pined for almost three long years. He was going solo because he’d have control over his own story. He was going solo because he’d get to decide how he handled his powers and who he fought for. Without the club, he could be the silent hero Mayview’s paranatural population didn’t know it’d needed; so it didn’t matter what the club was thinking about him. He could fake not caring until he actually didn’t care anymore, and he had hope that day was coming soon.

 

High school hadn’t been what he was expecting. Where the movies portrayed high school as a sexed up, drugged up, dumpster of a place to be, he wasn’t finding a lot to complain about. All of his teachers were pretty nice, and obviously used to handling freshmen. There were couples making out in the hallways, but teachers reprimanded them quickly. Three months into the year, and he hadn’t heard about a single party. People talked to each-other about getting drunk, but he’d never seen anybody swaying with the wind on campus. The hallways were crowded, but not as much as he was expecting them to be. All in all, high school wasn’t the awful experience he was imagining it to be.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t things that bothered him. Because Mayview only had the one high school, there was a mixture of social classes that clashed almost violently on a normal basis. The kids with less money hurdled insults at the group that was visibly better-off, to which the ‘rich’ kids offered snooty if not abnormally witty remarks. The two groups went at it every morning, so much so that there were rumors about certain kids from one group dating kids from the other. With each passing day there was a growing animosity but affection to the way they mouthed off to each-other. Isaac often sat around just to keep an eye in case things escalated. More often than not he found the same old scene boring and repetitive, but that was when she wasn’t involved- Clara Appleby. She was a freshman with charcoal hair and a resting grimace somebody could see from yards away, even behind her overly large round glasses. Despite appearances, Clara was a peacemaker, although she was more aggressive about said peacemaking than Isaac hoped he’d ever be. She was a girl with no association with either group, just an observer like he was. Isaac had taken an interest in her the day things had escalated to a physical level. The guy Isaac had dubbed “Scar-face” for the clearly painted scar over his eyebrow, the ‘leader’ of one group, got into a fistfight with “Jack NICKELson” (get it, because nickels are currency), the ‘leader’ of the other group. Upon the first swing the two juniors took, they both went down on the pavement like bricks. When Isaac looked closer, he’d seen their shoelaces were tied together.

Clara had tried to start a conversation with him on multiple different occasions, but he’d always been too flustered by the concept that somebody actually wanted to talk to him to respond meaningfully.  
“What did you think of Sarah Tony’s speech last night when she won that Grammy?” Clara was bent around in her seat to talk to him, elbows resting on his desk as he scratched away at their bellwork. “It was all about climate change and I think it’s wonderful she’s using her influence to inspire that kind of movement, don’t you?”  
_I was actually incredibly impressed. I didn’t think a lot of Sarah Tony before, considering a lot of her work is auto-tuned and I don’t really listen to that stuff, but I really like her. Any artist willing to put their fame to good use is an example we should all follow._ “It was fine, I guess.” Isaac felt his cheeks heat up. Of course he had an opinion on the speech, why couldn’t he just say that? “Sarah Tony is cool.” Well, that was insightful. Clara pursed her lips and tapped her jaw where her fingers rested, but otherwise didn’t seem too put-off by his lackluster response. He had to come up with something better to say. She was the first person to try to be his friend in an incredibly long time so messing up was absolutely not an option.  
“So…”  
“Do you like anime?”  
Clara’s eye widened, but not in the ‘wow yeah I love anime how did you know’ way. It was in more of a ‘what the hell is anime’ way that he knew so upsettingly well. Isaac felt whatever hope he’d had for a friend fall deep into the pits of his stomach. _Not to mention that probably sounded incredibly racist, considering she’s Asian._ If he could just walk away, dig himself a grave deep enough to burn inside the Earth’s core and die there, that would have been great. Class was about to start, though, and he actually liked taking math with Mister Carver. “Uh, when I was ten, maybe. You’re still into that stuff?”  
Isaac had retraced the number 4 about fifty times, each line darker than the last. “Maybe.”  
“Okay, I don’t know if you and I are on the level that I can tease you for that yet, so I won’t.”  
Isaac broke the tip of the pencil. He coughed on the thick smell of lead coming in wafts off of his paper, and maybe on the realization that Clara recognized there was a thing called ‘boundaries’. He’d so been expecting another cruel whip at his hobbies like he would have gotten from Max or a snicker like he would have gotten from Ed. Whatever he was expecting- it wasn’t that. His coughing jerked his body just enough to remind him that he was covered in black and blue bruises. He hid the jolts of pain behind the very fake sound of clearing his throat. Clara tilted her head down at his broken pencil, pulling the one she had tucked by her ear out and handing it to him. “Good job, Hulk. What’s next, your desk?”  
Against all odds, the awkwardness of the conversation was slipping away, and Isaac was chuckling at a joke at his expense. “Who keeps a pencil behind their ear, anymore? Are you eighty?”  
Clara snickered and wiggled her fingers around in front of his face, unbearably impersonating twilight zone sound effects. “Maybe I am! Who’s to say, hm?”  
Isaac brushed her hands away and gave her his best awed expression. “Old Lady Appleby! Your complexion is magnificent!” Clara laughed, and for a few seconds he could see the wheels turning in her head as she searched for a response. There was a beat of silence, and it was eerily similar to the awkwardness he’d felt earlier, but the ball was in her court- not his. It was kind of refreshing, being teased and enjoying it.

 

Four months into the school year and Clara was quickly becoming the best friend he’d ever had. She laughed at his jokes- and at him. That was okay, though, because he got to laugh at her, too. She snored while she slept in class. She once checked out a book and never returned it to the library. She got sent to the principal’s office because she stuck gum in the teacher’s hair when she was nine. If he was embarrassed about watching anime, she was embarrassed about watching soap operas because the guys were hot. Clara was as imperfect as he was and she was perfectly fine with letting him see her be imperfect. That was why, and he knew it was crazy, he was very seriously debating telling her about spectrals- namely that he was one.

He didn’t know why he was so spooked about it. It wasn’t like he couldn’t play it all off as a joke if she didn’t believe him. If she was skeptical but willing to listen, then he’d just conjure a small rainbow. He wasn’t worried she’d tell anybody (because nobody would believe her). Every scenario he ran through his head had a backup plan, but he was still incredibly nervous about it. Maybe he was worried she’d be scared of him? _Play it off as a joke, then. Say you’re just a magician and it was a magic trick._ Even with his safety nets in place, he couldn’t help but hate the idea of her rejecting it all; he couldn’t stand the thought of her rejecting him. She was probably going to need some time to think, and that was understandable, but what if she never stopped thinking? What if she kept her distance from him and avoided him? Even if that stuff didn’t happen and he managed to play it off like some golden magic trick, would he be able to handle lying to her? Would he be able to handle knowing every day that she’d be terrified of him if he hadn’t lied at the last second?  
Isaac closed his locker and exhaled, slamming his head against the closed door.  
“You okay there, Red? You’re lookin’ a little pale, even for a ginger.”  
That was a voice he was very familiar with: Hardy Deering, a junior. He was probably the cockiest jock to have ever walked the Mayview High gym, which was funny considering he was objectively terrible at any and all sports. Isaac shared PE with the guy and often observed him showing off with a basketball. Well, it was less observation and more first-person experience. Hardy would toss the ball in the air just to catch it when it fell, because he sure as heck couldn’t twirl it on the tips of his fingers. Isaac still shivered when he remembered Hardy giving him a wink before he completely missed the shot. He played football, but the coach had him on the benches near constantly. When the class played volleyball, he repeatedly hit the ball into the net if not straight into the ground- on his side of the net. Aside from that, he wasn’t an awful guy. Hardy flirted a lot, but he wasn’t a jerk about it, so it wasn’t something to be paid a lot of attention to. Isaac twisted around so he was leaning against the wall of lockers, blowing an imaginary piece of hair out of his face. “I’m fine, Deering. Why are you asking?” He didn’t usually refer to people by their last names, primarily because he felt that would clue people into his weaboo status like a giant red arrow, but Hardy never called anybody by their first name. Isaac would just ignore the ‘Red’ nickname. Hopefully he’d never use it again.  
“O’Connor, right?”  
“Yeah?” Isaac raised an eyebrow, more curious than anything.  
Hardy tugged at the rim of his beanie, giving the appearance that his normally-sized forehead was much smaller than it really was. His tousled hair fell far past the ends of his hat, down to his shoulders. It really completed the whole baggy-pants “rulz suk” look he had going. The longer they stayed silent, locked in some sort of glaring contest, the more Isaac was crawling under his skin. The fingers on his books clenched enough for him to feel the beginnings of a paper cut. His other hand clenched the strap of his backpack with enough force for his knuckles to turn white. “So, I heard some rumors from some of the freshmen I’ve taken under my wing.”  
“Okay, and I’m assuming those rumors have something to do with me?”  
“Yeah, they do” Hardy shrugged. “Wanna know what I heard?”  
“Not really, no.”  
If there was one thing he didn’t need, it was to be involved in some half-baked high school scandal. He was happy for the first time in a very long time, and no stupid rumor about him hooking up with some sophomore nobody likes was going to ruin that. Isaac pushed off of the lockers, turning on the tips of his toes to head for the staircase. He wasn’t expecting Hardy to corner him against the locker with two slams to either side of his body. Isaac gulped and glanced from the hands beside his shoulders to the junior trapping him. “I heard that you talk to thin air, like you’re speaking to ghosts or something.” _And what, he's gonna beat me up for it? I didn’t peg him the type. Great, Isaac, you’re a horrible judge of character. Fantastic. Exactly what you need on top of all the other daily stresses._  
Isaac wanted to tell him to shove off, maybe use some colorful language now that he was a young adult, but nothing was louder in his mind than the primal instinct of self-preservation. He stayed silent, gulping and staring Hardy down from his place a few inches below him. “Well, is it true? Do you talk to ghosts?”  
Isaac shifted uncomfortably, eyes casted down at their shoes. “I, uh…”  
“Look,” Hardy readjusted so that he and Isaac were on eye level “do you see spirits or what, ‘cause if you do then that means I’m not friggin’ crazy.”  
That wasn’t what Isaac expected to hear.  
It hadn’t occurred to him that there were spectrals out there the club didn’t know about- kids who didn’t explode when they got their powers, or maybe kids who did, so they kept it quiet. Looking at Hardy then, he wasn’t nearly as menacing. In fact, the guy looked akin to a nervous wreck, a small bead of sweat falling down the side of his face- more than anything Isaac had seen him sweat during a game- not that he went to his games. Hardy’s green eyes darted back and forth as he awaited Isaac’s reply. It was kind of amusing, actually, having such an ego-maniac at his mercy.  
Isaac reached up to one of Hardy’s wrists and gave the skin a small, but noticeable, shock. Hardy yelped and pulled that hand away, shaking it and glancing between the tingling skin and Isaac. His lips parted to say something, but he resigned to merely pointing at his hand in a silent question. _Did I do that? Yes, I did._ The medium gave him the most wicked smile he could and shrugged, crossing his arms in a manner he presumed was cool while he held his books. Hardy stood there, eyes switching from his hand to Isaac, Isaac to his hand, and the cycle repeated until the obvious clicked in his mind.  
Isaac was anticipating some joyous ‘woots’ or enthusiastic leaping, maybe even a bone-crushing hug. After all, Isaac knew what it was like to finally find somebody like him, and he was kind of starting to feel it all over again. Hardy would be the first spectral he’d met outside of the activity club- somebody he could talk to about spirits and somebody to depend on in the heat of battle. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go crawling back to the club when he needed help? Maybe he could teach Hardy and they could learn the secrets of the spectral world together?  
Hardy smiled when the reality set in, a wide toothy grin stretching across his face the longer he stared at Isaac. The medium was almost proud of himself, making another person so happy. It was even better that it was just because he existed in Hardy’s universe. “There’s probably a lot you don’t know. There’s a lot that I don’t know, too, but I think we can figure that stuff out together, if it’s cool with you?”  
Things turned topsy-turvy fast, much faster than Isaac could handle. Hardy cupped Isaac’s face in his hands, large happy grin turning almost mischievous. Isaac’s heart leaped in his throat, hands clenching and uncleaning in rhythm at his books and bag. Hardy didn’t seem to notice how nervous Isaac was and, if he did, he presumably enjoyed the power of it. His Cheshire grin sent chills down Isaac’s spine the larger it grew. “An excuse to see more of you? I’ll buy it.” Isaac struggled to think of something cool or witty to say- something to rip the power right out of Hardy’s arrogant hands. All that came to mind were some quotes about the importance of teamwork from some animes he hadn’t watched in six years.  
Hardy’s breath was hot on the medium’s face. As badly as Isaac wanted to knee the guy, Hardy was harmless. More than that, he was not worth breaking his vow of peace for. Hardy’s thumb grazed Isaac’s lips as he pulled away, fast enough Isaac didn’t register the missing body heat until the jock was already a couple feet away. In seconds he was running backwards down the hall, waving at Isaac jovially as though they’d just exchanged pie recipes like sweet little old ladies. “Catch you later, O’Connor! I’ll find ya when I need ya!”  
Isaac watched him go, fingers touching where Hardy’s thumb met his lips. Slowly, he sank to his butt, staring vacantly out the windows.

 

Clara had been staring at him for a full five minutes. Isaac was sure of it. He sat there with a rain cloud in one hand and a miniature hailstorm in the other. Her eyes were reading blank, but the rest of her face said that she was riddled with curiosity and fascination. She hadn’t doubted him when he said he had powers, but she wasn’t completely sold to the idea, either. She asked for proof, and he’d provided it just as he had planned to. So far, things had gone exactly as planned, except now was the true moment of truth- the hard part. Clara blinked and readjusted her glasses so they weren’t falling off her face. “Well, if that isn’t the weirdest thing to happen in Mayview, yet.”  
“So, you believe me?”  
“Assuming there aren’t any mirrors or cameras hidden in this dark dirt path that I didn’t know about, sure.”  
Clara took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose, lips in a twisted frown. Isaac was a ball of nervous energy, his heart bouncing in his ribcage like some kind of crazed loony tune character. He was sure they’d have seen it attempt to jump out of his chest, provided he’d had elastic powers. Maybe he should have waited a few more months. This was a lot of pressure to put on somebody he’d been talking to all of October and November. _By the way, Clara, you made friends with a freaky medium who has weather powers- hooray!_ As much as he’d hated himself for it, that was pretty much what he’d managed to stutter through anxious gulps of air. When she finally put her glasses back on, Clara seemed stoic about the entire situation. He wasn’t sure if she was internally screaming at the top of her lungs or if she genuinely was that calm. “Who else knows about this?”  
“Uh,” was it a good idea to tell her about the activity club? Telling her about his powers was up to him, but outing the club without their permission? Was it a good idea to tell her about Hardy? Isaac cringed at the name, a shiver running down his spine at the memory of his thumb tracing his lip. He could still feel it on his skin and it freaked him out. Isaac hid the chill with a hand scratching the back of his neck. “Uh, well…”  
“Scratch that- tell me you don’t have one.”  
“Have one what?”  
Clara rolled her eyes and slapped his arm like he should have known exactly what she was talking about because ‘GOD Isaac you’re SO STUPID’. She waited patiently for him to hiss in pain, but it didn’t come. She frowned at him, but he just shrugged. He’d had a lot worse hit him harder in the last six months, not that she would know that. “Come on, you know.”  
“What? A superhero name? I’m not a-!”  
“No, idiot! Well, yes that too, but I’m talking about a techy! A sidekick from the sidelines! Somebody who helps you escape the abandoned building with a detailed map of the layout! That sort of thing!”  
Isaac arched an eyebrow. Clara exhaled and stomped around in a circle, flipping the bottom of his sweater instead of smacking him a second time. “Isaac, I wanna be the Felicity to your Green Arrow. The Sisco to your Flash. Get it?”  
“I’m ninety percent sure you have no tech experience, like, at all.”  
“I can learn. Books exist for a reason.”  
Isaac massaged his temples and turned around, continuing on the trail that would eventually lead home. “I knew I would have a headache, but not this kind. Not for this reason.”  
Clara was right behind him, falling naturally into the same step on their way down the path.

 

“Oh, my god, Clara what is this?”  
“A thermal sensor. It helps me see the ghosts you’re seeing. Well, see their heat, anyway.”  
Isaac timidly handled the oddly-shaped camera-looking device in the palms of his hands. He wasn’t sure if it was expensive tech, but he didn’t want to find out. He wanted to tell Clara he wasn’t sure that was how any of it worked, that ghosts wouldn’t necessarily show up on a glorified mood ring. He wanted to tell her that he’s not sure she can really help him do his job, if that’s what he was calling it. While he appreciated all of her support, there wasn’t a lot a normal person could do. He was starting to think that was another reason why Spender’s mysterious superiors always said “don’t tell anybody about being a spectral”. Maybe it wasn’t too late to tell her he was just a magician?  
Isaac opened his mouth, but the words died in his chest before they could reach his tongue. Clara had set up a system for herself. He could see tabs of detailed maps of Mayview’s many small patches of forests, floor plans for buildings he knew were near cemeteries. She was working hard and it was to make him feel supported. He’d been asking for a friend like her his entire life, then fate hands her to him and he’s going to lie just to get her to calm down? He couldn’t do that.  
“Clara?”  
She paused in the middle of a very long-winded rant about books she’d read and hadn’t entirely understood, concepts she was sure she could pick up over time, and looked at him. Her lips stayed parted, as though she was prepared to continue talking when he was done with what he had to say. She was excited and, as great as that was, he had to slow the tracks a bit. “Maybe we should just start with you knowing about this for a bit?” Isaac gestured to the set-up he could already tell was going to be more complicated than either of them could understand “Instead of jumping straight into whatever this is?”  
Clara blinked, looking at Isaac with an unreadable expression. He could match a lot of emotions to the way her eyebrows furrowed, and her lips thinned. More than anything, he was sure he saw embarrassment. “I- oh yeah, of course. I got really carried away. I do that sometimes! I’m really sorry.”  
“Clara, it’s okay, really!”  
“No, it’s not! I didn’t even ask! Oh my god, this is way too much.”  
“For right now, maybe!”  
He placed his hands on her shoulders and shook her lightly, squeezing where she was tense. Clara’s feet shuffled against the floor, eyes scanning the laces of her shoes. “Look, just let this grow on its own, you know? Here, I’ll take the thermal sensor and I’ll see if you can see the spirits and ghosts with it and stuff. Does that sound okay?”  
Clara nodded, meeting Isaac’s careful gaze with an optimistic one. “Alright, yeah. That sounds like a good idea.”

It was early in the morning on a Friday, the day that nobody wants to put up with anything because they are within inches of the sweet weekend escape. Isaac was at his usual spot, leaning against a pillar just close enough to the bickering of the social classes to hear them without being obvious. Clara sat beside him on the ground, scratching down some last-minute homework answers before the bell rang to report to their individual living nightmares. The two sat in comfortable silence, enjoying the breeze that swept the walls of the courtyard. Isaac was looking forward to the winter and all that came with it: snowmen, warm fires, tea with a book and a blanket, snowball fights…

He remembered last winter, the first time Max was experiencing cold without the comfort of the city. They’d all poked fun at him for shivering under two jackets and a sweater, his teeth chattering so loud they could hear it from a foot away. Isaac told him it would be a good idea to switch his cap for something warmer, like a beanie, but he’d rejected the idea vehemently. It was Ed who broached the subject of a snowball fight- well; he tossed a snowball that hit Max square in the face, if that was what broaching meant. Isabel was too busy hunched over laughing to notice Max reaching down to gather snow. Isaac remembered watching the batter with complacency as Isabel got a scoopful of snow shoved down the back of her jacket. She’d screeched and struggled to get the white fluff out of her clothes, all the while screaming that Ed should have been the one to fall victim to Max’s heinous act. Ed was readying another snowball when one of Isaac’s hit him in the side, knocking him off of his balance and sending him face-first into the snow. Isaac had rarely felt as proud as he did, then. Max had patted him on the back, sarcastically hailing Isaac as his ‘hero’ for avenging him. The attention had been welcome if not desired. Isaac had been too busy soaking up the recognition to notice Isabel rolling a rather large snowball, roughly the size of her torso, with the anticipation of smacking him in the face with it. The excessively large snowball nailed Isaac in the chest and he fell backwards under the force of it. Max had reached out to help him, but retracted his hands at the last second because he was laughing so hard his sides hurt. The four had gotten into the biggest snowball fight Isaac had ever had, splitting into unclear teams with no rules and no signs of cover in sight. It was one of Isaac’s more treasured memories, one of the few times attending Mayview Middle was ‘fun’. The four of them not only missed the tardy bell, but all of first period and some of second.

He pondered vaguely on what winter would be like now that he hadn’t seen them in half a year. He missed them and he knew it, but it wasn’t enough to make him fold on his resolve. Isaac turned his attention to Clara, who was banging her head repeatedly against the sides of her notebook as she struggled with her homework. _Clara seems like the type to have a snowball fight. A snowball fight with Clara could be fun._ The yearning he’d been feeling eased up, but it was far from disappearing. Memories of the activity club that didn’t make him want to tear his hair out were becoming increasingly common and he hated it. There weren’t enough of them to make him change his mind, darn it! His guilt was getting to him and it was ridiculous. Being a part of the activity club had regularly drained him, left him feeling empty and angry and helpless. They lowered his self-esteem. They made him regret ever learning about spectrals, which sucked because he loved his powers. Cutting the club out of his daily routine was just a part of him growing stronger. Maybe he’d yearn for their company every now and again, but quitting the club was ultimately the best thing he could have done for himself.

He must have been lost in that train of thought for a long time, because the hand that was waving in front of his face started snapping. Isaac swallowed and glanced up to see Hardy standing there, an eyebrow cocked and the traces of a sneaky grin tugging at his lips. “What’s got you so down, Red?”  
“Don’t call me that.”  
“Fine, whatever. You’re such a buzzkill for a guy with an Irish lineage.”  
Isaac blanched. “How did you know I’m Irish?”  
“Your last name is O’Connor- ‘ts pretty damn Irish.” Hardy glanced at Clara, who was looking between the two of them with a question at the tip of her tongue. She’d probably said something about not knowing he knew Hardy Deering, but Isaac hadn’t heard it if she had. Isaac watched Hardy with crossed arms and a grimace that he was sure made his lips look unappealing, not that he thought Hardy was genuinely interested in him or anything. “Listen, dude,” Hardy gripped the sleeve of Isaac’s shirt, sending a jolt of energy through Isaac’s body that made his face heat up so much he couldn’t even feel the cold pre-winter air “can I talk to you alone?” Isaac thought about saying no. He thought about telling Hardy that Clara knew about spectrals, but when he looked at Hardy- genuinely looked at him- the guy was in a nervous sweat. He kept shifting like somebody was watching them, throwing glances over his shoulder, and worrying his lower lip. His eyes were wide with fright Isaac couldn’t understand, but he was willing to try.

 

“What’s this about, Deering?”  
“I saw something last night, man.” Hardy was pacing back and forth in the empty hallway, running his hands through the locks of hair that weren’t hidden under his huge black beanie. Isaac watched him with what felt like curiosity and concern. He didn’t think much of it. It was in his nature to love humanity and care about other people. It was in his nature to want to help. Hardy definitely looked like he needed it. He was shaking under his clothes. Isaac chose not to say anything about it since there was no reason to embarrass the guy. All it would do was make Hardy distrustful of him, and he was just about done dealing with not being trusted. “I was just listening to my music, ya know? I plugged my headphones in and it was almost like time stopped or something!” _Oh._ “There was this creature just, like, staring at me. I don’t know if it was a spirit or what, but it looked like a dog and it had these huge-ass megaphone ears and holy shit, dude I’m freaking out!”  
“Calm down, it’s perfectly normal. Everything’s alright, you just met the spirit in your tool is all.” Hardy dropped all of his weight against the lockers across from Isaac, running his hands over his face as he recollected all the air he lost panicking.  
“Wanna tell me what a tool is?”  
Isaac smiled and pushed away from his spot against the wall, laying a cautious (friendly) hand on Hardy’s shoulder. “Here, let me start by saying we are called spectrals and you and I are not the only ones.”

 

“Okay, try it again.”  
Deep emerald spectral energy- almost Ed’s color, but deeper. It was comparing the grass in spring to an old oak tree. Isaac found himself staring at Hardy’s eyes when his energy flared- it was the same color. Often he shook it off and pretended that he hadn’t just been staring deeply into the arrogant jerk’s eyes, because romance was far from his intention. It wasn’t even in the ballpark.  
Hardy’s already unusually stern expression became focused, determined, as he twirled his tool (a pair of white headphones) around the tips of his fingers. With a huff of hot air and a lash of the chords so fast it sounded like a whip, Isaac could almost see the soundwave echo through the air before it went crashing into the decoy wooden person Isaac had constructed last minute. Where before, each limb fell individually, there was a clean cut right down the middle of the dummy. Isaac watched with curious eyes as the top half came sliding to the ground, leaving the bottom half unevenly stacked atop Isaac’s eighth grade text books. It soon fell to its side, succumbing to gravity. “That was pretty impressive, Deering!”  
Isaac breathed into his hands, warming them up as best he could without gloves. It’s not like it was that cold outside, yet; he just kept getting chills for some reason.  
Hardy popped his headphones into his cell, smirking at Isaac from underneath his beanie. “I’m just an impressive person.”  
Isaac rolled his eyes and handed Hardy his book-bag, nodding to the exit of the abandoned parking lot they’d stumbled upon. Well, stumbled upon wasn’t so much the truth as they’d spent an entire weekend looking for one. It was just that the forest was a hotspot for paranatural activity, so not actually hitting anything would have been hard. It wasn’t like Mayview had plenty of large, grassy open fields- the city was pretty much nothing much copious hills. The next best thing had to be an empty parking lot. Hardy didn’t seem to mind, but he also didn’t seem to mind being trained by somebody with little more idea than he had himself.  
Isaac wasn’t exactly sure what to do. It wasn’t like he’d ever had proper training, himself. How was he supposed to teach a new spectral much of anything? That was the problem- he wasn’t. Eventually, he’d have to tell Hardy about the dojo and about the club and about what he’d done-!  
Hardy would abandon him, too.  
Having Clara around was great, really great, but she wasn’t a spectral. She could only help him up off the ground and dust him off. She couldn’t see the things he’d seen or fight by his side or joke with him about particularly unsettling spirits. Her understanding of his world could only go so far- Hardy was different. Sure, he told Hardy about how there were other spectrals in the world and that everything he was experiencing was perfectly normal, but what if Hardy started asking other questions? What if he asked if Isaac knew other spectrals? What if he decided Isaac wasn’t good enough anymore?  
“Hey, Red! Let me walk ya home.” Hardy wrapped an arm around Isaac’s tense shoulders and pulled him toward the exit. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. How about I show you my favorite place?”  
Isaac fought the smile that was urging him to giggle like a schoolgirl- which he was not, darn it. He was a macho teenage boy bursting with testosterone. “Are you asking me out?”  
Hardy shrugged, and something told Isaac it was an excuse to brush their shoulders together. “Well I’m not not asking you out.”  
Isaac snorted and elbowed his friend in the chest, not very hard, just enough to set him straight. “Only if you’re paying.”  
He took a few paced steps to get ahead of Hardy, snickering when he heard “Well that’s kinda what date implies!”


	2. Well That Escalated Quickly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac has his first run-in with cursing, parties, beer, and a few other things he probably shouldn't be doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm off to an amusement park with my friend for the weekend, but I thought I'd upload the next chapter before I left! All three chapters are finished, but the third one needs checking and blah blah blah. Basically the take-away is that I still haven't decided what time-span should be between one chapter and the next and chapter three will probably come a little later.

_Ima go 'cause I got no_  
_Problem with saying goodbye_  
_Is it wrong that I'm gonna be_  
_Having the time of my life_  
_'Cause deep down I know_  
_I should cry I should scream_  
_And get down on my knees_  
_I should say that I need you here_  
_But I'm gonna party tonight_  
_'Cause honestly I just don't care_  
_\- Hot Chelle Rae “Honestly”_

“You’re blind and I never wanna talk to you again.”  
“Wow, that is so prejudice of you.”  
“Wow, that’s so prejudice of you- shut up.” Isaac could hear Clara rolling around in her chair over the phone, probably seconds away from falling backwards and knocking the collection of her tech off of the desk. “You’re gonna make a left and you should see a door there, or something eerily similar.”

Isaac grimaced and padded through the soaking wet swamp that was the old abandoned retirement home. _As if being in a molding building wasn’t bad enough. Now I could be walking on some widow’s husband’s ashes. Good luck explaining that to a ghost._ Vines and weeds had grown between the cracks and crevices of the walls, leaving little room to see what were once painted beige rooms. The place reeked of death and feces. Basically, everything was horrible and awful and he just wanted to retrieve his grandmother’s old silver locket so he could go home. It was something his mother had always grieved losing in the retirement home’s cave-in, aside from having actually lost her mother. The sinkhole had taken enough from their family already. If Isaac could just find that locket, then maybe his poor mother would have some peace. His grandmother didn’t appear to be haunting the place, which was a huge relief to him. On one hand, he would have loved to see her and tell her about everything that’d been going on with their family. He would have loved to tell her about how Dad got a promotion and Mom got awarded for her directing job at the local theater. But, at the same time, her haunting a place so eerie he felt his skin crawl like he was covered in leeches- it wasn’t a good thought. He wouldn’t want that for his grandmother.

Scavenging the home had always been something he’d wanted to do, but he’d had too much on his plate. Between dealing with spirits and ghosts and school, and then trying desperately to claw his way up from the position of club mascot, he hadn’t had a lot of time left to deal with his grandmother’s lost locket. _Now I have time to not only find the locket, but clean it and wrap it in a pretty box before I decorate the entire Christmas tree by myself with time left over to sweep the house._ Well, that was an exaggeration, but that was how absolutely free Isaac felt.

He came across what he was assuming was the door Clara had mentioned earlier. It was covered from top to bottom in vines and molded wood. With a sigh, he conjured a small tornado in the palm of his hand. “Why are you so upset that I don’t find Troy Danger attractive? He’s average, I’m sorry!”  
“Oh my god, you are so straight! Hell, I’m not even sure that’s you being a straight dude. Like, ninety percent of the population agrees he’s hot and you’re in the ten percentile.”  
Isaac wasn’t about to correct her, especially since he wasn’t even sure what the hell he was yet, but the accusation still pinched his nerves. High school was the time to figure all of that stuff out, and he would. He wasn’t sure when, but he would. His entire life he’d never really questioned who he was into. Things were simple. He’d have a crush on whoever he had a crush on- he’d just never expected to actually get a crush on a guy. _Let alone a guy who should have no business in my love life whatsoever. He’d just make fun of it._ He’d never really mentioned it to anybody, thinking that he might have liked Max. By the time he’d figured it out, he’d already made the decision to rinse himself of the club at graduation. Actually, figuring out that he liked Max was an even bigger motivator to push the activity club as far away from him as possible. The last thing he needed to share with Max was his budding romantic interest in him. Not only would it open him up to what probably would have been a very rough and cruel rejection, but he most certainly would have gotten mocked for it by the rest of the club. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe they would have been more understanding and, you know, empathetic. Isaac just couldn’t find it in himself to imagine that. It would have felt so wildly out-of-character for them to be nice to him about something as embarrassing as a crush on Maxwell Puckett.

Isaac breathed in and settled his hands in front of him, concentrating on the door long enough to blow it straight off its hinges. The molded wood broke off in any and all directions, leaving him with a splintered hole he could easily fit through. He’d just be left with a few splinters at the end of it. “The guy’s got abs, but his face is just so mangy.”  
“What, not your type, huh?”  
Clara was giggling at him over the line, but he couldn’t be bothered to answer her question. No, Troy Danger wasn’t his type. He liked the whole ‘bad boy doing stunts’ thing (which he despised about himself), but he liked a clean face. Tony Danger had a nice body, but it wasn’t enough to measure up to his manipulative personality. The guy probably had twenty illegitimate children running around. Every interview he’d ever read made the guy sound like a raging asshole.

Isaac powered his way through the splintered hole, hissing every time his skin came into contact with some rather ragged edges. Just as he was pulling his other leg through, he managed to slip on the wet tile of the floor. His other leg made it through on his way to the ground, but not without colliding with the sharp wood of the door. Isaac grunted and took deep breathes through his nose, hands flying to the large shallow gash across his calf. Clara asked if he was okay, and he muttered reassurances through the phone that he was just fine- which was a lie, but she’d get over it. Once the pain stopped enough for him to feel up to standing, he pushed himself off the floor. He picked up the phone almost as an afterthought. “Where to next?” His voice was raspy from the pain, but it would go away eventually. _We have Mom to think about, here. This locket means the world to her._ He’d worry about the gash getting infected later.  
“Uh, there should be a staircase to your right.”  
Isaac looked to his right, where he could see the end of a staircase poking out just through an archway. The last thing he wanted to do was climb stairs with a bloodied calf, but he would just need to deal with it. _I’ve had worse._ He remembered the last ‘wound of the week’, when he’d been limping back home because a spirit with claws had seriously torn up his ankle, among other things. Isaac could still feel the scratch marks on his back, still sore and scabbing over. He was starting to wonder if one of these days he’d get stuck with a permanent scar. He kind of looked forward to it. Having a scar would make him look super badass, even if it hurt like a bitch when he first got it. Clara was horrified when he’d shown her the wounds the following day, and pissed when she found out he wasn’t terrified of having an ‘everlasting blemish’ on his body. _I don’t think I’ve been reamed that hard since I broke a vase when I was seven._ Still, it was nice having somebody overtly care whether or not he got himself maimed in the name of justice. Clara had a tendency to flip out on him when he got hurt (‘flip out’ was being gracious), and that annoyed him, but it was better than her not caring at all.

Hiding the wounds got a lot easier when Clara started helping out. She had no problem lying to his parents for him or painting his skin with copious amounts of concealer. He’d even caught her looking up how to do stitches, which he immediately had to shut her down on because- no. When he started coming to her with larger wounds and darker bruises, she started forcing her help upon him. The only reason she was walking him through the retirement home was because she insisted on keeping an eye on him as he chanced untimely death via sinkhole. So far, he enjoyed having the company. Not to mention, having her read off directions to his grandmother’s old room was a lot easier than wandering blindly around the place for hours. Isaac approached the foot of the staircase, only to see it was just that- the foot of the staircase. There were no stairs between the second floor and the first floor. Isaac exhaled. “We’ve got a problem. The staircase is broken.”  
“That shouldn’t be a huge problem. Break a hole in the ceiling or something.”  
“And climb up with what? Sheer upper body strength? I don’t have a lot of that.”  
He heard Clara open up what sounded like a lollipop and begin sucking on it noisily. “Okay well, you have wind powers, don’t you? Levitate with them or something.”  
Isaac inhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Fine.”  
Levitating wasn’t something he’d ever really done. Using gusts of wind to leap fences was one thing; keeping those same gusts of wind under control long enough to get up the stairs was another thing. He supposed he could just jump, but he feared the floor would break out from under him if he landed with too much force, and then he’d really be screwed. After attaching the charm of his phone to the belt loops of his pants, Isaac focused another miniature tornado in his hands. He took deep and slow breaths as he stretched his concentration for the first time in a long time. He’d had enough control of his powers, when he wasn’t using them on a much larger scale, to get away with little to no concentration when it came time to put them to use. He was starting to worry years of no training left him at a larger disadvantage than he originally thought. “Clara?”  
“Yeah?”  
“If this kills me…”  
“I’ll make sure you’re sent away on a boat with roses.”  
Isaac snorted. He painstakingly directed his hands to the ground, swallowing when he felt his feet leave the floor. If he just focused on the wind between his fingers, if he just inched his way up the staircase, then perhaps he’d have a new ability to show off the next time his peaceful propositions didn’t work. “Thank, Clare. I appreciate that.” The process of reaching the second floor was painful, taxing on both his mind and his tensed arms. He was infinitely grateful to feel the weight of the wooden floor at the soles of his feet. Isaac would have fallen flat on his arse if he didn’t think the floor would give out under him. “I made it.” He pulled the cell phone from his belt loop, holding it in front of his face in the hopes that he still had a signal. “I made it.”  
“Told ya so.” He could hear Clara clicking away from whatever tabs she’d opened up in the time he’d crossed the small molehill of a problem. “Okay, you’re super close. Your grandma’s room should have been three doors down to the right.” There was dead air for a few seconds, and Isaac took that as Clara double-checking her directions. He heard the tell-tale click-and-drag sound of a mouse against Clara’s makeshift mousepad (a small notebook she’d found at random in the girl’s bathroom). “Yep, good luck finding the locket. I can’t imagine it’ll be easy.”  
“I don’t remember a lot about the rest of the home, but I remember my grandma’s room. I know right where she used to put it.”  
He was surprised to see the door completely intact. Vines had claimed the door its victim, but the wood wasn’t as touched by moss as the rest of the home was. He took it as a sign of fate- proof that he’d find the locket on the other side. He reached out and tore the vines away, probably with more gusto than was needed. On the other side of the door, his grandmother’s room was largely untouched. There was a hole in her floor and in her ceiling where the fan and light used to be, and the carpet was torn and equally as moldy as the bedsheets, but it still looked the way he remembered it. The room seemed much smaller, but he’d been much younger the last time he’d set foot over the threshold. He took a few steps into the room, feet crunching the leaves that had flown in through the broken window. He, like any other child, was antsy and bored when they visited their grandmother. There wasn’t a lot to do, aside from baking and dancing with the elderly who weren’t afraid of breaking their hips. He’d complain until he was blue in the face or until his grandmother picked him up. If she was paying attention to him and playing board games with him, then he was happy. He could see his memories playing like old silent films, some of him throwing hissy fits in his diapers and others of his grandmother rocking him to sleep before his parent’s drive home. Each memory was just a special as the last, and the idea that he could share those memories with his mom again had his heart leaping for miles.

Once he was done reminiscing, as that wasn’t what he’d nearly cut off the lower part of his leg to do, he made a beeline for the dresser. _Top left drawer, hidden beneath underwear because there’d been a nurse with a case of kleptomania._ Sure enough, after he’d braved the undergarments of his deceased grandmother (something he really never wanted to think about doing ever again), he found the silver locket. It shined when he held it to the setting sun outside the window, dangling from a chain at the tips of his fingers. “Found it!”  
There was a sputtering on the other end of the line. “Did you seriously? Nice! Best Christmas present ever!”  
He shoved the necklace into his pocket and took a step forward before he felt a shiver down his back. “Hey, Clare? Is there anyone in here with me?”  
He heard Clara’s mouth pop around her lollipop. “What? I can’t see that, Isaac! I’m literally just looking at a map of the layout. We’re not there yet.”  
Well, duh. Isaac shook his head and tried to wipe away the embarrassment that was ensuing from his stupidity. “Right, yeah. Okay.” Isaac smiled and scratched his nose for no other reason than it made him feel cool. “Alright, Clare. Show me the quickest way out of this place. I have a Christmas tree to decorate.”

 

“I hate this.” Clara tugged at the top of the low-cut dress she was trying on, messing with ‘the girls’ so that she looked a little more like a woman. It didn’t help. Isaac watched her twirl in place in front of the body-length mirror of whatever the hell store she’d dragged him into. The bright green was obnoxious against her skin tone. Not only did it wash her out, but it fell at her waist like she had the hips of a pregnant woman.  
“I do, too. Take it off. You look like Kermit’s bride.” Clara looked exaggeratedly offended.  
“No need to be hurtful, god!”  
“How was that hurtful? Kermit’s a great guy!”  
Hardy choked on his soda, covering his mouth with one hand to keep from spitting it all over the classy dressing room floor. Clara laughed under her breath and sashayed back into the dressing room, sweeping the curtain closed behind her. Isaac watched from his seat next to Hardy on the soft bean bag chair as the green monstrosity went flying through the air.  
He’d never really enjoyed going to the mall, primarily because it meant he was either with his parents or alone. Wandering around, passing stores full of people trying things on and laughing with each-other and eating together- it all made him feel lonely before. The only place he’d ever visited was the one store Max had dubbed “Weab Central”, much to Isaac’s chagrin. They had walls full of imported anime figurines and plushies and body pillows (he’d bought one, once, and he’d hid it every time one of the club members came over to pick him up). He’d wander for around two hours every time, wishing he had enough money to buy that special edition DVD set or that Naruto backpack.  
Isaac glanced up at Hardy, who was splayed across the black leather couch like he owned the store. “There’s a place I wanna stop at on our way to the food court.” Not that they hadn’t already been there once that day, but Hardy seemed to have a black hole for a stomach so they were going again.  
“Yeah?”  
“You guys have gotta’ promise not to laugh at me, though.”  
“I am making no such promise.” Clara opened the curtain, swaying her hips to see how the new dress fit. It was mistletoe red, a much better color on her. Not to mention, it was fitting for the Christmas party she was throwing- the same Christmas party she’d pretty much forced himself and Hardy into purchasing new clothes for, too. The paper bag at his side had begun cutting into the bottom of his calf where his newest wound was, so he winced and kicked it to the side as stealthily as he could. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to it. It wasn’t like it was infected or anything, and he was able to walk and run just fine. There was no reason to bother worrying them about it. It’d heal in a week and he’d forget it’d ever been bloody. Clara laughed as she came to stand in front of the mirror again, twirling on one leg before looking at herself from the side. “I’m messing with ya. Where do you wanna go?”  
Isaac tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Uh…”

 

“I’m regretting my oath of silence.”  
Isaac rolled his eyes and grabbed Clara by the hand, tugging her into the store with him. Hardy was snickering to himself, but he was keeping his comments to himself. Usually, that would have been great, but all that meant was that Hardy was saving his quips for the right moment. “Shut up. I won’t take long.”  
It was just the way it was the last time he’d been there- lines and lines of anime merchandise just waiting for him. _One day, my love, one day…_ Chocolate bars with gummies inside, life-sized mecha guns (not useable, of course), scroll posters with his favorite characters and OTPs- Isaac was in heaven. He lifted a box of pocky to his face and frowned. A quick hand in both of his pockets reminded him that he didn’t have the money on him to buy a box, not after purchasing that vest Clara had adored on him.  
“Oh my god! Oh my god, Zatch Bell! I remember Zatch Bell! Isaac, they’ve got Zatch Bell!”  
Clara jumped in small excited bursts, pointing and squealing. Part of him wanted to pretend to be her exasperated older brother, just to mess with her, but he wouldn’t. She was too excited and he would have felt bad. “I thought you said you didn’t watch anime?”  
“I said I don’t watch anime anymore! This is practically my childhood right here!” Isaac smiled and shook his head, setting the pocky back down.  
He’d get it another time, no big deal. He was kind of just happy to be in the store again. It’d been a long time, probably the entirety of summer. He’d been so busy basking in his newfound freedom that everything else was almost on-the-side to him, like some of the things he’d enjoyed before were nothing but entrees. The start of his high school career had been the thing that kind of knocked him out of it and reminded him that he had a full life to live.  
Hardy picked up the pocky he’d just set down, eyeing it with curiosity and amusement. “What is this stuff?”  
Isaac ran his finger along the large yellow font on the front of the box. “Pocky.”  
“And pocky is?”  
“They’re stick-shaped biscuits covered in chocolate. They’re really good. Sometimes I finish off a box in seconds.”  
Hardy made a low whistling sound and turned the box over to see the price. “Want me to buy these for you?”  
Isaac made an undignified squealing noise, somehow on key and in tune with Clara’s (“Pucca! Isaac, look, Pucca!”). Hardy laughed and Isaac covered his mouth with his hands, a deep blush beginning to crawl from hell to his cheeks. He supposed that, even without the club, he was still prone to embarrassing himself. He wasn’t really surprised by that, it was just kind of something he remembered every once in a while. “You would do that?”  
“Sure.”  
“I love you.”  
Hardy began walking to the counter and Isaac followed him, sticking his hands in his pockets so he could twiddle his thumbs in the fabric without his nervousness being blatant. “Is that a confession?”  
“Are you really that desperate for one?”  
Hardy smiled. “Kinda!”

 

“This sounds like the opposite of a good idea.”  
“No, dude, seriously! Junkyard rave party- my friend is hosting it. What part of that doesn’t sound fun?”  
Isaac crossed his arms and shot Hardy the most skeptical look he could possibly muster. He’d learned a little from Max. It was all in the eyebrows and eyes. Cock one eyebrow, but keep the other as low as possible. Squint at the victim like he had something wrong with his sight. “Is this a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend?”  
Hardy rolled his eyes and tossed his head back, groan sounding uncannily similar to the mating call of a large humpback whale. Some of the tables around them went silent and looked their way, but it wasn’t like the entire food court was watching them. “Oh my god, this guy is practically family, okay? I know him, I swear.”  
Clara, who was snickering into her fries, was evidently finding the situation more amusing than Isaac thought it was. He’d come to know Hardy moderately well in their time as spectral partners, and any promises the guy made were questionable at best. He could swear up and down that he personally knew the host of the ‘junkyard rave’, but Isaac wasn’t buying it. It wasn’t like he thought Hardy was being malicious or anything, it was just obvious he was lying. The ‘why’ was never clear, but the desperation behind the promises was cut and dry. “Why do you want me to go to this thing so bad?”  
“Well, you’ve never tried beer, for one.”  
“And you’ve never kissed anyone.” Clara added, elbowing Isaac in the ribs. He grimaced and swatted her away.  
“How would you know that?”  
“Dude, come on” Hardy covered a snicker with his hand. Isaac placed his hands on his hips, feeling strangely like a mother with a child in desperate need of a time-out corner. Hardy held his hands up in mock defense “What, Red? It’s kinda obvious!”  
“How? How is my love life ‘obvious’?”  
“You literally push couples making out in the hallway apart.”  
“That’s because they’re taking up space where people walk.”  
“I once saw you sprint from across the courtyard just to put a textbook between Marley and Jared. It needs to stop.”  
Isaac imitated a whale mating call, himself, finding it a fruitful exertion of his irritation. 

 

If he hated the concept of teenage parties, Isaac detested and loathed actually being at one. It was pretty late for a school night, the sun having gone down around an hour ago- the same time Isaac lost faith in his generation and his ‘friends’. Clara was standing atop an old wrecked car, dancing awkwardly and, in all probability, drunkenly with two other girls. She’d dragged him over to the barrels of beer some poor brewer’s kid and his friends had snagged earlier. Isaac refused to take even a sip of the sad excuse for a beverage, to which Clara shrugged and chugged down an entire cup. Hardy had wandered somewhere else early into their arrival. _He’s probably just as drunk as Clara is. Oh please don’t tell me that means I’m in charge of getting these assholes home._ Part of him wanted to just leave his friends to their own devices, but he was too good a person to do that. After all, what if he was Clara’s only defense against some guy too plastered to think straight? What if she was too plastered to think straight? Isaac definitely had to be the designated mature one.  
_What would Max be doing right now?_  
Isaac shrugged the thought off, but others just like it came to flood his mind. Max was probably at home, right? He probably was playing some video game or snarking at the rest of the club because he wanted to go home and their mission was taking too long. He wondered if Max would have been standing there like he was, watching his friends get shitfaced while he sat on some old mangy bus seat. He wanted to believe Max would have been doing the same thing, but he wasn’t so sure. Maybe Max would have gotten involved and had a few drinks? _We’re underage, though. Drinking under twenty-one is illegal and-!_ Earlier that day he’d been inside of a retirement home deemed unsafe by the Mayview City Council, so being there was technically illegal too. He told himself that was different, that he had a valid reason and that fact excused the illegality of it. _That’s not true, though._  
“You are, by far, the stingiest motherfucker I’ve ever known.”  
Isaac yelped at the feel of a cold plastic cup against the back of his bare neck. He reached up and wacked the cup away, turning to get a better look at his aggressor. “Deering!”  
Hardy snickered and took another sip from his cup, bending over so that he and Isaac were on eye-level. “Would you quit being a pansy and take a stupid drink? You don’t have to be the mom friend, genius. That was the entire point of inviting you.”  
“I’m not being a mom friend! I’m being-!”  
“Mature? How about this- there are places in Europe that somebody can drink as soon as they’re tall enough to reach the counter. Is a ten year old more mature than you, Red?”  
Isaac took a deep breath and glanced at the kegs by the makeshift table, a smashed car with what appeared to be a picnic blanket thrown haphazardly over it. Entire groups of people his age stood around, swallowing cup after cup of liquid poison like they didn’t understand the concept of mortality. Some part of him wanted to believe he was better than that- but was he really? He was the only one not having any fun. He was the only one fighting a normal high school experience just because- because why? He didn’t really have a reason.  
Isaac sighed and stood up. “Alright, good for you, man!” Hardy wrapped an arm over Isaac’s shoulder and began walking him to, what Isaac thought would be, his worst decision ever.

 

He was incredibly dizzy. Everything around him made sense, but at the same time it didn’t. Hardy had to repeat himself once, twice, maybe four times before Isaac understood what he was saying. His head felt like it had some weight with the touch of a feather laying precariously between his eyes, but his stomach was churning and he felt so full he didn’t know if he could ever eat again. He thought he might have danced in the middle of a mosh pit? That was odd, but everything was odd to him. He was pretty sure he’d fallen over a few times in fits of laughter he wasn’t prepared for. He couldn’t even remember what the hell he’d been laughing at.  
“H-holy shit, O’Connor!” Hardy was laughing, too, on a bent and broken car right by his side. Isaac was pretty sure Hardy was three sheets to the wind, same as he was. Granted, he was also sure Hardy had more to drink. “You’re actually funny when you’re drunk!”  
“Hey!” Isaac punched him in the arm, putting a little more weight into the swing than he meant to. Hardy caught him as he fell forward and pulled him back into the seat. Isaac blinked at the hand resting on his arm, almost certain there’d been more space between himself and Hardy before. He was pretty sure he was smiling. He could feel the stretch of his lips. “I’m effin’ hilarious.”  
“Holy shit you’re plastered and you’re using a baby word for fuck?” Hardy threw his head back, practically howling in Isaac’s ear. Had Isaac not been downing his seventh cup, he might have cared. “You- you’re somethin’ else, Red.”  
Isaac laughed and leaned his head against Hardy’s shoulder like he didn’t know what it looked like to other people. He didn’t care. He’d spent so much time worrying about the stupid club and trying to get their stupid attention and stupid Max and his stupid crush and his stupid love life and his stupid face and his stupid smile and his stupid everything! He had everything he ever wanted- friends that cared about him, the right to make his own decisions, the time to bond with his family and visit Doorman. Why he was still thinking about the stupid club and stupid Max and his stupid stupid crush, he didn’t know.  
He thought Hardy might have called out to him. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been caught completely lost in his head. Isaac glanced up from his place at Hardy’s shoulder, wincing when the lights hit his eyes just enough to remind him of the weight in his head. His vision was getting just as blurry as his mind was, wobbly and confusing. He almost felt like he was being lifted and swayed from side-to-side, but he felt the metal against his pant legs, so he must have been still. Hardy’s face was somewhere above his, but he couldn’t see him when he was moving so fast- or was he moving at all?  
Hardy’s face was changing colors under the strobe lights feet above their heads, but Isaac could see how rosy his cheeks were and how green his eyes looked. He was flushed from his drinking. That had to be it. Well, maybe he was thinking something weird, but usually it was Isaac who fell victim to a legible face. Isaac felt himself fall back and he used his hands to steady himself against what was left of the car they sat on. He felt warm and cold at the same time, like he held a cup of hot chocolate to his lips in the winter freeze. It took him a few seconds to realize Hardy had kissed him, with a brain so foggy he couldn’t think straight and legs that felt distractingly heavy. Isaac let Hardy kiss him again, and he let the sleeve of his sweater fall down his arm where Hardy held him.

 

It wasn’t a headache- it was a migraine. It was like all of the feathers that’d filled his head to its brim the night before were now weights and daggers behind his eyes. Isaac clenched the water bottle somebody handed him with weak but aggressive hands. He wasn’t sure where he was. He’d made it home safely, though he wasn’t entirely sure how. All he knew was that he woke up to Clara banging incessantly at his bedroom door and Hardy mumbling something about catching a quick breakfast on the way to school. It was with little fervor that Isaac arose from the bed like a zombie and hastily changed his shirt. He’d seen guys wear the same pants all the time. Whatever. Nobody would notice. He wasn’t sure even he’d noticed with the way his head was murdering him slowly and violently with wave after wave of sharp pain and nausea. “Aw, Baby’s first hangover.”  
“Deering, I will kill you where you stand.”  
Isaac could feel Clara’s gentle hand on the back of his neck, massaging him in pretty much the only place that didn’t hurt like hell. “Shut up and buy the water, Hardy.”  
“You got a hangover too, Appleby?”  
“No shit. You don’t?”  
“I get them often enough it’s kind of my natural state nowadays.”  
Isaac grimaced and rubbed one of his temples with his free hand. “So it’s not your fault you’re a horrible athlete?”  
Hardy made some type of squeaky offended noise while Clara snorted loudly. Isaac twisted the tip off of his unpurchased - from what he gathered so far, anyway- water bottle and chugged as much as he could humanly take without drowning himself. He didn’t remember a whole hell of a lot from the night before. As far as he knew, he’d gotten a little drunk, danced for a little while (must have been funny to see), then passed out and got home somewhere between then and when he woke up. Well, he definitely remembered kissing Hardy, which would unquestionably be something he’d freak about when he didn’t wanna die anymore. Hardy hadn’t mentioned a word of it, so there was a possibility he didn’t even remember it. Isaac kind of doubted that, but eh. They’d talk about it later. It wasn’t like Hardy was completely off his radar- in fact, Isaac had caught himself staring more often than he’d ever admit, but that didn’t change the fact that he was confused. He was still trying to sort out the mess he’d been before, and kissing Hardy was either going to sort a lot of those problems out or make him an even bigger mess. Isaac paused to breath, coughing as some of the water went down the wrong hole.  
“Isaac?”  
He held up a single finger in an attempt to communicate “one minute I’m dying right now”. When his throat cleared up and he felt like he could breathe again, he stood up straight and shook his head to clear his senses. When the worst thing happening to his body was, once again, his violent migraine, he handed Hardy the bottle to put it on the counter to check it out. “Dude, what happened to you? You look like a freshly-killed zombie.”  
Ah, right, so that was an amused newcomer- not Hardy or Clara- talking to him. Isaac shrugged and gazed up at Hardy with eyes he hoped communicated just how mad he was about getting dragged to a party. Hardy chuckled and slipped a few dollars out of his back pocket. “I didn’t know you knew the family that runs this place, babe.”  
“Babe?” The voice on the other side of the counter sounded just as floored as Isaac felt. So that son of a bitch did remember! Clara’s howling laughter fell on deaf ears. Isaac smacked Hardy on the arm as hard as he possibly could, to which Hardy broke into (as far as Isaac was concerned) unsolicited laughter.  
“You- that was one time! I didn’t know what I was doing!”  
“Tell that to the hickey on my neck.”  
“Deering!”  
“Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa, Isaac gave you a-? But he’s not that cool!”  
Whoever the mysterious newcomer was, they were about to get a whole lotta’ hell from a customer- and a very strongly worded letter to their manager. Isaac slammed his hands on the counter, wincing when the sound that hit his ears made his eardrums pop. He jabbed a rigid finger right into the stranger’s chest and scowled as threateningly as he could manage without locking his jaw.  
When Isaac realized, through blurry dizzy vision, that he was standing face-to-face with Max, he faltered.  
The same asshole he’d known five months ago, the same guy who made his heart race and his palms sweat and his stomach twirl when it wasn’t dropping like a bag of sand, stood there on the other side of the counter. He was smirking like they’d never been apart, like Isaac hadn’t left the clubroom never to return, like he was still the same smart ass and Isaac was still an easy target. Isaac swallowed and turned away so fast, he didn’t see Max’s eyes trailing his messed-up collar.  
“I’m too hungover for this.” He went straight for the exit, with the intention of waiting outside until every bit of interaction with Max was taken care of and over with.  
“Wait, he’s-? Isaac was-?” Isaac heard Max tumble over his words.  
“Isaac, slow your ass down!” Clara called after him, but he was already way out the door, both literally and mentally.  
“Well yeah, kid.” Hardy placed his money on the counter. “He wouldn’t have kissed me if he wasn’t.”

 

Isaac blinked, shook his head and made sure he wasn’t still suffering a little-known symptom of a hangover, and tilted his head. “Did I do that?” Hardy blinked back at him, one eye perfectly normal while the other was an unseemly purple. His entire brain had been so foggy and it’d been thumping so painfully, he really hadn’t noticed the very-apparent black eye on their way to class. Now that it was lunch time and he didn’t feel like throwing himself out a three-story window, he was vaguely worried about Hardy’s palpable bruising. Hardy shrugged and went back to inhaling his sandwich.  
“Nope.” He glared at Clara. “Don’t say a word.”  
“I wasn’t!” She twirled the school’s slightly-edible spaghetti around her fork, probably for longer than she needed to. She avoided Isaac’s eyes when he glanced her way, sticking so many noodles in her mouth that she looked like a chipmunk. Isaac frowned and nudged Hardy’s elbow off the table, leaving Hardy to sputter and fumble with his sandwich before he came within centimeters of hitting the table with his face.  
“O’Connor! What the hell, man?”  
“Are you really doing this right now? Are you really keeping secrets from me?”  
Hardy rolled his eyes and readjusted so that he was sitting closer to Isaac. “Look, I’ll tell you eventually, okay? Swear it. I just don’t want you doing anything stupid.”  
Isaac opened his mouth to respond, but paused to consider what was being said. Hardy wanted to tell him- just not right away. Isaac understood that. Some things were best kept until emotions weren’t running as high, and he couldn’t exactly call himself a ball of calm at the moment. With the whole kissing Hardy thing and the hangover and running into Max for the first time in nearly half a damn year- he was fairly tense. He couldn’t blame Hardy for trying to keep the weight off his shoulders. Clara and Hardy had clearly decided it was in his best interest to hear about the story behind Hardy’s black eye when he wasn’t ready to explode in a fit of lightning, so he’d trust them. They’d never given him a reason not to, after all.  
Isaac filled his mouth with pizza instead of words.

 

It was ten o’clock at night. Isaac just wanted to sleep. He’d had a long Thursday night and an even longer Friday. All he wanted was to wake up to Saturday well-rested and not stressed and excited for the weekend. He couldn’t do that if Hardy’s stupid freaking ringtone didn’t keep vibrating off the nightstand. Gwen Stefani’s “Make Me Like You” might have been quiet to his parents three rooms down, but it sounded like a fire alarm to him. He’d been drifting somewhere between the soft white noise of his ceiling fan and the bliss of slumber, but now he was between falling unconscious and breaking his phone in half.  
“What?” It was less of a question and more of an aggressive demand. Isaac heard Hardy’s heavy breathing on the other line, almost as though he was out of breath. Isaac sat up in bed, leaning over and switching his light on. “Deering? What’s wrong? Are you crying?”  
“I- I don’t know, man. Probably.”  
Isaac rubbed at his eyes and glanced around his empty room. “Do you need to sleep over?”  
“P- Probably. Dude, I’m freaking out.”  
“What’s wrong?”  
Hardy was quiet for a few seconds, sniffling and coughing. Isaac could almost hear him shaking on the other end. There was a shiver down his spine again, but he shrugged it off. “Deering?”  
“Appleby and I were- we were walking home together, right? ‘Cause she lost her ma’s bracelet at the party last night. We found it an’ everything but” Hardy sniffled again “but- O’Connor dude this- this thing flew by us and I didn’t know what happened but she’s- she’s gone! Appleby is gone, dude! I don’t know where she went! I don’t know what happened to her!”  
Isaac’s heart fell straight out of his body, as though he’d never even had one to begin with. “Fucking shit!” He pressed the speaker button and threw his phone onto his bed, ripping his closet doors open and tearing off his nightshirt in record time. His pants were off and replaced with jeans, albeit with more trouble than he’d been hoping for. In seconds he was slipping on his sandals, grabbing his phone, and running faster than he thought himself capable out the door.  
“O’Connor? Dude, what do we do?”  
There was only one thing he could do.  
“Deering, meet me at Mayview Middle. Be careful. I’ll see you there.”


	3. Best Left Unrecalled- Or Not?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Isaac’s last-ditch attempt to save Clara, and he’s not going to like it any more than he thought he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the last chapter! I hope everyone who's read it has enjoyed the ride! ^_^ Thank you for following me through three chapters of angst, romance, mild humor, and OC-centricness!

_'Cause once upon a time you were my everything_  
_It's clear to see that time hasn't changed a thing_  
_It's buried deep inside me but I feel there's something you should know_

_I will never forget you_  
_You'll always be by my side_  
_From the day that I met you_  
_I knew that I would love you 'til the day I die_  
_And I will never want much more_  
_And in my heart I will always be sure_  
_I will never forget you_  
_And you will always be by my side 'til the day I die_  
_\- Zara Larsson “Never Forget You”_

They were probably surprised to get a call from him at ten at night- on a Friday no less. He wasn’t particularly thrilled about it, but he knew when he had to put his pride on the backburner. Clara was more important than his ego would ever be. Even so, he couldn’t deny that he hated it, crawling back to them like some kicked puppy. They didn’t deserve the vindication. They didn’t deserve to hear him ask for help. When he walked away at graduation, his intention was to damn well never talk to any of them again. Yet there he was, running as fast as his legs could humanly carry him straight for them. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised; he never got what he wanted.

Mister Spender seemed as panicked as Isaac would have assumed he’d be, blonde hair tussled and glasses falling down the bridge of his nose as he paced in small circles. His belt was on, but it was unlatched. Half of his wrinkled shirt was falling over his unlatched waistline. He could tell by the lines of Spender’s face he had been worrying himself over something other than Isaac calling him at ten at night. Though, Isaac hadn’t; he’d called Isabel, who then woke everyone else up. She was, after all, the only one who’d doubtlessly answer the phone.

Isabel herself looked a bit more put together. Her hair was tied away from her face in a tight ponytail, but her bangs were messy and all over the place. She was frowning at the ground like it’d done something to offend her as a person, but he knew that was kind of just her default expression. When she swung her head so that her hair fell over her back instead of her shoulder, he could see she was wearing a pajama shirt under her jacket. That couldn’t have been warm- not in the cold of early December.

Ed was a little more prepared. Isaac could probably assume he’d still been awake. Not only did he have a heavy jacket zipped up around him, but he’d pulled the hoodie up and over his head, leaving only his glasses peeking out from beyond the hole. Isaac could still tell that he was smiling under his gigantic garb. It was just something in the way he swung back and forth on the soles of his shoes. His paint brush was sticking up out of his pocket, and for a second Isaac thought it might have been a black and white hamster trying to breathe.

When Isaac first saw- him- he’d nearly slowed to a stop. Even after five full months, he felt the weight in his chest hit him full force. He looked good, maybe an inch taller. He was going to be tall enough that their noses would be touching had they stood facing each-other. It was a thought he had, playfully tapping his nose with his own, but he’d shaken it as fast as it’d come. That wasn’t what he needed to be focusing on. Max was no less prepared for a mission than he usually was. That was to say, he still carried that backpack full of metal with the bat hanging out the side. He was in his usual Insolent Children jacket, like the colder weather didn’t constitute a warmer outfit. Isaac grimaced as he felt the bite of the cold air on his arms. He’d rushed out of the house in jeans and a t-shirt. He wasn’t really one to criticize.

When Isaac finally came to a stop before them, he was bent over gasping for air because he hadn’t stopped running in the five miles it took to get from his home to the school. He half expected to hear “Training to run a marathon?”

Then he reminded himself that Clara wasn’t there.

“Isaac, what’s the emergency?” Spender was the first to say anything, voice dripping with an almost paternal concern Isaac had certainly never heard before- not in conversation with him, anyway. He turned his gaze from the dirt on the ground to the club, wincing when his lungs reminded him he wasn’t fully recharged yet. They stood alert, watching him with an array of expressions. Ed almost seemed nervous, which was awfully odd for him. Isaac could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Ed sweat, and almost all of them were in the summer or in the presence of Master Guerra. Isabel was having a hard time deciding to be irritated, cautious, or penitent. Her nose kept twitching and her eyes were shifting constantly between Isaac and literally anything else. Max was the easiest to read. His brows were furrowed and his lips were thin and his jaw was hard, but there was an almost troubled look to him, like he was apprehensive about how to take care of the kicked puppy that’d returned to them. Of course, Isaac could have been seeing what he wanted to. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d made that mistake with Max.

When he finally caught his breath and it didn’t feel like his own lungs were strangling themselves, he took the opportunity to steal the upper ground. He stood with a straight back, hands at his sides, and made his expression as unreadable as humanly possible. He might have been coming to them in desperate need, but that didn’t mean he had to abandon everything he’d become after he’d left them. This was a one-time deal, and they’d know it. “My friend. I think rogue spectrals kidnapped her.” Saying it out loud sounded kind of stupid. He hadn’t exactly thought that idea through. Was that a thing? Rogue spectrals? It had to be. He technically was one.

“Wait, why would rogues take your friend? That doesn’t make any sense.” Isabel was just as forward as he remembered her being. “Rogues don’t just kidnap people for no reason. It’s way too easy to get caught and dissected like a lab rat. I can only think that maybe she was a new spectral?” Isaac frowned. Oh god.

He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up bad. The tightness he’d felt in his chest was back again, but it was even tougher to breath. His heart was pounding against his ribcage too hard for him to focus on anything, and thus he let down his guard. His face fell, contorting with all of the guilt and anxiety he was feeling. Each breath felt like he was swallowing a full bottle of water. Spender called out to him. “Isaac?”

“No, but she knows about spectrals.” He swallowed. “She knows I am one. She knows we exist.”

“Oh my god, are you trying to get us all experimented on?” Spender reached out and gripped Isabel’s shoulder before she could say anything else, visibly commanding her in so little words to hold back. She glanced up at him and frowned, crossing her arms and very visibly choking on every word that might’ve been said. Spender took a step toward Isaac, to which he took a step back. Spender seemed to notice, because he didn’t take another step forward. There wasn’t much to read on Spender’s face, aside from maybe a disappointed frown he was trying desperately to hold back on for some reason.

“While I do agree with Isabel, that was a very foolish thing to do, we need to focus on your friend.” The mood of the room seemed to change, eyes that were watching Isaac like the stupid dog he felt he was becoming unbiasedly observant. He nodded.

“Her name is Clara and she- she was with our friend Hardy at the Junkyard.”

“Pfft, what?” Ed snorted “Why were they at the Junkyard? Were they looking for a secret passage to some unknown ancient temple that’s run for centuries undetected under Mayview?” Typical of him- making jokes. Either that, or he was seriously hoping that was the case.

“No- she lost her bracelet there-!”

“Why’d she lose her bracelet in a junkyard?” Isabel raised an eyebrow, seeming less disbelieving and more curious.

“There was a party there last night-!”

“That you went to.” Max stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled at Isaac, like he was some type of disapproving sibling who was lightyears older and wiser- which was ridiculous. “Are these the same friends that got you blackout drunk last night?” Isabel and Ed cried out in surprise, glancing at each-other, then at Isaac, then back at each-other again. Spender, as odd as it may have been, had little reaction if any- and Isaac was much too busy being angry at, and in awe of, whoever the hell Max thought he was to notice any of it.

Isaac returned the scowl with a grimace. “They’re also the same friends that carried me home and made sure I got to school on time today, and the friends that bought me three bottles of water and Advil because they care about my well-being!” Max’s eyes widened, his tight expression faltering before he put it right back up again.

Isabel and Ed looked like they were seeing shades for the first time, some mixture of disturbed and undeniably curious. Their jaws were practically unhinged and their eyes were so wide he thought they were going to lose them. “I can’t believe you Isaac, of all people, drank.” Isabel scrunched her nose and pointed at him.

“Neither can I, and I was there.”

Isaac felt some of the anger that’d flooded his body melt, a relieved sigh slipping past his lips. He wasn’t the only one to turn around to see Hardy, but he was probably the only one that almost felt safer. “Deering.” His beanie was half off his head, one sleeve of his green jacket had fallen off his arm almost completely, and his already messy hair looked even worse than usual, but Hardy was there. With bloodshot eyes and legs that very visibly shaking, Hardy was there- making jokes like the asshole he was.

“Are you in a cult, Red? Because that would explain a lot…”

Hardy didn’t seem fazed at all when Isaac ran into him and wrapped his arms around his neck for a quick hug. In fact, he might’ve been expecting it. Any trace of the fear and apprehension he’d heard over the phone twenty minutes before was gone. In the seconds he’d had his arms around Hardy, smelled his winter pine cologne and the citrus in his shampoo, he’d felt an overwhelming sensation of tranquility slip over him. It was a reminder that he wasn’t still the activity club mascot, that he was just Isaac. He was Isaac and he wasn’t alone. When they pulled away, Isaac gestured to his friend. “This is Hardy.” He gestured to the club. “This is the activity club. All of these people are spectrals and they can help us find Clara. That man, Mister Spender, he actually works for an unknown spectral organization.”

Hardy cocked an eyebrow. “Unknown?”

Isaac shrugged and whispered. “To me, anyway. Kinda why I’ve never mentioned them before.”

Hardy nodded and turned back to the rest of the gang. Much to Isaac’s fascination and dismay, Hardy’s eyes fell near immediately on Max. The two were instantly locked in the most rage-filled staring contest Isaac had ever seen. Their auras flared above their heads, whipping to and fro dangerously. Isaac glanced between the two of them, deciding somebody had slice the knife-cutting-thick malice. “So, uh, Deering actually is a spectral…”  
“One we’ve never met before?” Spender raised an eyebrow and offered Hardy a hand. Hardy glanced at it, back at Isaac, and then gave Spender as firm a handshake as Isaac was sure he could muster. Probably not very firm at all. They exchanged the typical ‘nice to meet you’s and nervous smiles. “Do you have a tool, Hardy?”

“Deering, please.” Isaac nearly snickered at the correction. “And uh, yeah, I think so? O’Connor’s been teaching me how to use it.”

“Isaac has?” Isaac shot Isabel the same glare he’d always shot her when they’d still be a team, to which she completely ignored him per usual. “He’s not exactly a master.”

Hardy laughed and scratched the side of his nose, a very familiar smile stretching across his lips. “No, but he’s hot and it’s an excuse to hit on him.”

Max made a low humming noise that almost sounded like a hostile grunt. Isaac snorted and rolled his eyes, slapping the beanie clean off Hardy’s head. “Oh, go to hell.” There were small, shocked gasps from the rest of the club, which were way more entertaining than the light scolding he could hear from Spender (who looked unspeakably insulted).

“Isaac!”

Hardy gripped his hat by the seams, snickering as he slid it back over his tousled black hair. “Every second you’re away, babe.” Isaac cocked a mock-irritated eyebrow.

Once he was done ignoring the lecture Spender was giving him, Isaac turned his attention to the matter at hand. “So who kidnapped Clara and how do we find them?”

 

Being stuck with Hardy and Max- alone- was probably going to go down in history as one of the most unnerving experiences Isaac had ever had in the entirety of his life. It might not have been as bad if he couldn’t practically feel the figurative daggers the two were shooting each-other behind his back, but it still would have been pretty bad. It might have been better if they weren’t in the middle of the poorer parts of the city, where half the homes were abandoned or breaking down, with the other half of the group on the other side of the area. _Fucking hell._ He almost heard Mister Spender in his head.

_“Watch your language, Isaac O’Connor!”_

Isaac, unfortunately, was comforted by the thought of Spender being there. It would have made things a little less awkward. Would have.

“I’m not seeing Appleby or spooky spectral ninjas anywhere. We sure she’s here?” Hardy came to stand atop an old moldy couch that’d been left on the side of the street for anyone to take. With one hand over his forehead, he searched the large open fields and homes over the side of the railing. Isaac would have laughed and told him to get down before he hurt himself, but the mood just wasn’t there.

“Well, aside from the forest, where else would rogue spectrals have taken her?”

Max shrugged his backpack further onto his shoulder. Aside from the vaguely threatening looks he’d been giving Hardy earlier, he’d been avoiding eye-contact. _What’s up with him?_ “Well it’s not like they coulda’ left the city.”

Hardy hopped off the couch. “What? Why not?”

Max looked from Hardy to Isaac, raising an eyebrow. He might’ve forgotten to mention that entire thing to Hardy- which, in retrospect, could have been a horrible awful thing to forget about. “Um,” Isaac scratched the back of his neck “we kinda’ can’t leave Mayview. There’s a barrier around the city and our only way out isn’t really… working right now.”

“Holy shit, dude!” Hardy definitely seemed surprised- meaning Isaac had, without a doubt, forgotten to mention it. “What happens if I try to leave?”

“By foot, you kinda just run into a wall. By car…” Isaac trailed off, leaving it to Hardy’s imagination. While it wasn’t quite as wild as his own, he had a feeling Hardy would get a very clear idea about the situation.

“Damn…”

“Is every other word that comes out of your mouth a curse word?” Max’s scowl hadn’t left his face, not for a minute. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Max hold onto a leer so long. Hell, he would have thought it a stretch that Max would even be angry that long. Every other time he and Isaac had it out, it was always Isaac that’d held onto the grudge and wallowed in anger for thirty minutes. What could have possibly been up his ass, Isaac had no clue. Hardy rolled his eyes and snickered.

“If I fuckin’ want it to be, sure.”

Max rolled his eyes that time, walking feet ahead of them.

Isaac frowned and watched him stomp away, something akin to worry and guilt in his chest where irritation should have been. Hardy nudged him with his elbow. “You wanna talk to him?”

Isaac snorted. “Why should I?”

The two followed after Max, keeping their distance up and their voices down. The last thing Isaac needed (and wanted) was for Max to know he was giving him the time of day, talking about him and theorizing every little thing that could possibly be wrong. All Max would do is tease him and it’d be middle school all over again. Hardy shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. Think he’s upset because of you?”

“No way in hell!”

Hardy gave him a nervous smile and a pat on the shoulder. “Whoa, Red, seriously? You don’t think that maybe he’s worried ‘cause you were drinking?”

Isaac looked away, choosing to watch the animals and spirits run in and out of abandoned homes. Some animals had traces of food in their mouths, racing away to bring it back to their den wherever that might have been. The spirits lounged around on the roofs of the homes, mumbling in languages he didn’t understand and wandering aimlessly as he was aware most spirits did. There was a freedom to that he understood better now, but not entirely. “He wouldn’t worry about me like that. None of them would.”

“You think so?” Hardy shook his head and slung his tool around his fingers so that the chords would get tangled. Time and time again, Isaac had to remind him not to do that because he’d end up breaking the damn things, but time and time again Hardy ignored the warning. “I don’t know, Red. You called and they did come running.”

That gave Isaac some pause. He couldn’t exactly think of any reasons Hardy was wrong, necessarily, but that didn’t mean he was right.

 

Thank god it was a Friday night, because Isaac didn’t know what he would have done if he’d been awake at one in the morning on a school night. He probably would have cried- not a tear or two, but like, actual full on weeping. The moon was high above them, and he was sure it had every intention of mocking them and their sleep-deprived bodies. “Oh my god. You are a small child, why can’t you just wait?”

“I’m sorry! I just don’t want to die in battle because a spirit happened to get a lucky hit on my full bladder and made it explode. Death by urine is not the way I want my family to know I went.”

Isaac sighed and gestured toward the forest, watching Hardy do the bathroom dance all the way to a tree at their far right. He shook his head and glanced at his phone, instinctually checking for a text. When he realized what he was doing, he chewed on the inside of his cheek and stuck his phone back in his pocket with a vehemence. His phone would always blow up on the weekends, usually because Clara would be sending him links to new episodes of abridged series, selfies she couldn’t possibly feel positive about and new maps she’d purchased online. Opening his phone and not seeing a single new message sent new waves of guilt running through him like little else he’d felt before. He took a deep breath and tried to force it back down. They’d find her. She’d be fine.

“So,” Max’s voice was enough to make his stomach flip “are you two a thing?”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

Max was refusing to look at him again, eyes casted toward the distance, just over the hill where they’d be searching next. “You and Deering. Are you guys a thing?”

That was… a question. That was a question Isaac didn’t really have an answer to. They’d kissed, but they’d both been incredibly plastered. He and Hardy hadn’t really taken the time to talk about it, but he had called him ‘babe’. Did that mean they were together? But that just seemed like it was Hardy’s own brand of banter? He joked with Isaac all the time about them ‘being a thing’. Did he really want that? Did Isaac want that? He didn’t think he was ready for that, not when he was still so damn confused about “Max, why are you asking?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think you could do better?”

Isaac huffed, feeling the anger that’d been swept under the rug by all of his stupid affections come flying back. Somebody else might have taken that as a compliment, but the dust-bunnies of his rage had yet to die. “Better?”

“You know,” Max was looking at him, then, traces of that same assholeish smile tugging at his stupid lips “not a cardboard cut-out of the picture next to ‘burnout’ in the dictionary?”

Isaac was seething, and Max probably knew it by the way Isaac clenched his fists and the thinning of his lips, if not by his aura wafting through the air between them. Max could have said something else, something that might have proven Hardy right and something that would have made Isaac completely reconsider some of the choices he’d made- but he didn’t. He didn’t have to be a jerk. He didn’t have to reaffirm everything Isaac had already known, but he did. As much as Isaac would have loved to be wrong, for once in his life, he wasn’t. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and laughed, shaking his head. 

“Hey Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Eat a bag of dicks.”

Max’s face not only dropped, but his jaw did too. His face paled like he was absolutely horrified, which he probably was. Isaac glowed with the glory of it all, the first time he’d ever left Max Puckett speechless! Granted, it was a very low, kind of cheap blow, but it’d hit hard enough for him to win the battle. When the color returned to Max’s face, he was red in his puffed cheeks. Isaac could practically see the steam coming out of his ears- or was that his aura? Hardy chose that particular moment to come out from behind the tree, nearly slipping on some fallen leaves as he found his way down the hill. He paused upon seeing the growing tension, eyes wide and smile forced.

“Okay, what’d I miss?”

“Nothing.” Max hissed the word and stormed past Hardy, hands gripping the sleeve of his backpack so tightly Isaac thought he’d cut off his own circulation. Hardy glanced between the two with a raised eyebrow, an unspoken question hanging awkwardly in the air. Isaac shook his head.

“How’s your eye?” Hardy reached up to poke it and winced. “Don’t touch it!”

“Sorry, sorry.” Isaac approached the middle of the hill, standing there at a slope with his friend. He watched as Max trudged over the top, his black aura flaring behind him like a trail of negative energy. There was a small tug at his waist where his shirt fell, most definitely Hardy’s way of being cautious with him. It was something Isaac had never seen Hardy attempt to do- be careful with him. It didn’t really feel right. “Did you talk to him?”

“If I did, do you think it went well?”

Hardy stopped, glanced over the hill, and squinted. “Nnnno?”

Isaac sighed and kept going, giving Hardy’s sleeve a light tug. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t looking to repair things with Max- no matter how damn badly he wanted to. Max clearly didn’t approve of his friends, but he had no right to judge him anyway. All that mattered was finding Clara, and then he’d never have to deal with the club ever again. The entire experience was like reliving all of his worst days and nights, like he’d never graduated and he’d never gotten confident and he’d never figured out how to be happy. It wasn’t right. Max shouldn’t have had the power to do that to him, but he did. _Like it or not, he’s got me- and I really, really don’t like it._

 

How? How could they have searched pretty much the entirety of their side of the city and not found Clara? It was nearly three in the morning and all of his hope was running thin, along with his patience. Aside from Hardy’s bathroom break, they’d been walking nonstop. That usually wouldn’t have been a problem, but they were already running on low energy.

Hardy was all but passed out on the rusting park bench, breathing easy and level. He shivered every now and then, but there wasn’t a whole lot Isaac could do about that. Max was sitting on the bench with his cellphone in his hands, trying in vain to reach one of the others. They hadn’t responded to any of their texts, and Isaac was hoping that didn’t mean something horrible had happened.

He leaned against a tree beside the benches, one with leaves he could count on one hand. Most of them lied at his feet, crushed under his weight. It was funny. Even spirits hadn’t wandered into the park, save for a few stragglers on their way to their own little homes under rocks and in caves. It left everything oddly silent, for Mayview anyway. Isaac could see his own breath as soon as it left his mouth and he tried to remedy that by breathing into his hands and running them together. It didn’t help much, but he hadn’t expected it to. “No response?”

“Nothing! It’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.” Max ran a hand through his hair, holding the cap in the same hand he’d been holding his phone. He’d laid his cell in his lap, squeezing it between his legs so it wouldn’t fall. Isaac felt whatever hope he’d had left shrivel away, once again feeling the strings of guilt tugging at his chest.

He sighed and wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing his bare arms as fast as he could in the hopes that he’d light himself on fire. If he’d thought the air had been cold during the day, then he’d been sadly mistaken. At least the sun was out then, beating down on his skin when the wind wasn’t. He was really starting to regret racing out the door like he had. It clearly hadn’t helped Clara. He could have been wearing a coat or something.

He was getting flashbacks, then, of the party. He remembered feeling the bitter early December cold, but the heat of alcohol running through his body was more vivid. There’d been bright lights and loud cheering and he’d danced and just let go, for once in his life. Maybe he’d let go too much. Clara had danced with him, at one point. He’d twirled her around and shook their butts together and laughed so hard about how stupid they’d looked and how little they cared. That night had been simple, even when it’d gotten complicated (he recalled the touch of Hardy’s lips on his own). He would have given anything to just go back and replay that night, dance again, kiss again, have fun again. He was feeling anything but careless.

“Did you really give him a hickey?”

Isaac shrugged. “Not that I remember. He was probably just messing with me.”

Max was pretending to play on his phone, Isaac could tell. He was pressing random buttons like he was texting but Isaac knew he had yet received a response. Isaac glanced away. “Hardy’s not a horrible guy.”

Max didn’t respond, but he stopped pretending to text an imaginary person. When he sat there silently, with no response and no movement and no acknowledgement that he’d even said anything, Isaac exhaled. “Max, I swear he’s not-!”

“He took advantage of you and I’m not supposed to be a little mad at him for that?”

The air seemed to get even colder and harsher, like the night taking its last breath with a fist held high. Then again, it might have just been him. Isaac could hardly feel his heart beating, and for a few moments he’d wondered if it’d stopped completely. Max always seemed to have that effect on him. He’d meant it, every word he’d said. Isaac could see it as clear as he would have if the sun was out. Max wouldn’t change his mind, not for anything Isaac could say. “Max, he was just as drunk as I was.”

“He got you drunk in the first place. You said it yourself- you didn’t know what you were doing.”

Isaac was stuck somewhere between smiling and laughing or crying and asking every question that’d ever occurred to him over the last five months. “But I did- I meant I didn’t really remember doing it.” Not vividly, anyway.

“So who am I supposed to be mad at, Isaac?” Max’s voice was getting dangerously high, but Hardy didn’t even stir. Isaac felt like he’d taken his place in the earlier staring contest, but this one was even more dangerous and he didn’t know why. Nothing was making sense. Yes, Max was clearly upset with pretty much everything Isaac had been doing, but why? He raised his arms and gestured to himself and Hardy and pretty much anyone in the general vicinity.

“Why would you be mad at anybody?”

“Because you’re acting different!” Maybe what he’d heard in Max’s voice wasn’t anger, but some mixture of frustration and- grief? Max’s ever-present smirk was gone with not so much as a trace left behind; the lines of his lips curved downward in a little less than a snarl. Isaac felt his heart start again, but it was pounding rapidly in his chest. “He’s changing you! You’re- you’re cursing, you’re going to parties on school nights! You’re drinking! I feel like we’re losing you, dude! How else am I supposed to react?”

That caught Isaac off guard. He hadn’t thought any of those changes were really… negative? They were normal rites of passage for a guy his age. It just meant he was getting older, getting a little rebellious. Wasn’t he supposed to do that sort of thing? Isaac swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s not- it’s not like you guys went out of your way to talk to me.”

“We figured you were busy!”

“What about during the summer?”

Max bit both his lips and growled under his breath. “You left us first!”

He’d known it for a while, maybe longer than he consciously realized. It wasn’t something he’d figured he’d ever get the chance to say, considering his whole ‘vow to never return’ and all, but that would have been moot. It would’ve never gotten that far. If he’d just gotten a sign… Isaac was louder than he meant to be, but definitely not louder than he needed to be. “I just needed a call from you!”

It was Max’s turn to falter, eyes wide and lips moving with no words to speak. He was trying desperately to find a response; Isaac knew that look well, he’d had it often. “Hell, a text even! You- you could have asked me and I would have been there, to hell with going solo! But you didn’t! I waited for nearly four months and you didn’t!”

Max looked shocked more than anything, but there was clear confusion building in his eyes. Isaac swallowed what little pride he had left, electing instead to dump all of himself on the ground right there. It was about time. He was done lugging all of that around, dreaming of ways to just get it all out, spending hours thinking about some big confrontation that he knew fully well would never happen. Now that it was, everything was blowing up and spilling out of him all at once, choking both himself and Max in the process.

“Of course I tried to make new friends! Of course I got drunk! Of course I let him kiss me! How else was I supposed to get over you?”

Max’s cellphone rang, loud and aggressive rap splitting through the deathly silent air. Isaac expected him to answer it right away, but Max’s frenzied gaze stayed with his own. Isaac knew his face must have been a darker red than the colored leaves on the ground, and he knew well it wasn’t because he was cold. Max’s stare was as heated as his face, and Isaac couldn’t tell what emotion it was he was seeing.

“Oh my god,” Isaac’s attention snapped to Hardy, who was sitting up and rubbing at his eyes, powering through a long yawn “would you please answer that?”

Slowly, without breaking eye-contact until the very last second, Max brought his cell to his ear and pressed the green button. “Yeah?”

 

They were a couple of rogue spectrals, just like they’d summarized before the hunt. Extremists- according to Spender. They didn’t just want to rule over the spectral world, they wanted to make sure nobody would try to steal it from them- which might have been a viable scenario if anybody important ever found out about the paranatural world.

Isaac ducked and rolled out of the way of an incoming spectral shot, grunting when he felt it graze his arm. The bullet hit the ground behind him and he reached up to see just how deep it’d cut. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t just a scratch. He licked his thumb and wiped the blood away, setting his sights on one of the rogues that stood across from him. They were clearly invested in a hero-to-villain dialogue with Spender and, if Isaac’s past experiences were anything to go by, that was a perfect time to strike a hit.

When the rogue went flying into a tree at his side, Spender’s eyes widened. He seemed genuinely surprised, maybe even impressed. He turned to Isaac with a smile on his face. “Good work, Isaac! Your aim has improved!”

As much as he wanted to revel in the compliment (because he was weak and Spender’s compliments still meant the world to him for that very reason), he shrugged it off and charged into battle with one of the other rogues Isabel had gotten herself into a tussle with. They were rolling around on the ground, Isabel holding her own surprisingly well for being a quarter of the rogue’s size. He joined the fight just as Isabel got pinned to the ground, wrists held behind her back as she struggled to fire a spectral shot that actually hit. _Oh, hey! Thanks for leaving me the perfect opening, asshole!_ Isaac imitated the Naruto run, which would have elicited laughter from everyone, but it was for good reason. With a deep breath, he created a heavy stream of wind behind him. It lifted his feet off the ground and sent him flying into Isabel’s attacker at high speeds. The rogue huffed and rolled a few feet away, hitting one of the other rogues just as they were about to land a heavy hit on Ed.

Ed let out a low whistle, shooting Isaac a grin so wide it met both ends of his ears. “Wow, Isaac! Where’d you learn to do that?”

Isaac bent over and offered Isabel a hand. She looked up at him with furrowed brows and, while she seemed reluctant at first, took his hand. “Clara kind of forced me to teach it to myself, actually.”

Somewhere beside him, Isaac felt the heavy shake of the ground that came with one of Hardy’s attacks. The vibrations not only shook the ground enough to distract the enemies but, much to everyone’s horror, cut two rogues pretty deep against their chest. The two fell to the ground in twitching messes, quickly approached by one of the rogues still standing. Isaac twisted around. “Deering!”

He stood on another abandoned couch, looking both horrified and exhilarated. “Sorry, dude! I didn’t know it’d do that!”

Isaac groaned aloud and focused his attention on the bright orange sack that sat among a nest of vines, tied in knots too complicated for him to really understand. Clara was fast asleep inside of it, thank god. If she’d witnessed the blood Hardy had just (accidentally?) unleashed on the battleground, she might have been emotionally scarred. Isaac snorted. Then again, it was Clara he was thinking about. She was the girl that tied the shoelaces of nemeses together and made crude jokes and understood him even when he really thought he was hard to understand. Some part of him doubted she’d be incredibly fazed by the gore of it all.

“Isaac!” Max. He turned at the sound faster than he would have wanted to, had he not already spilled his emotions on the floor in a disgusting heap. He didn’t register the panic in Max’s voice until it was way too late. “Isaac, get down!” Max was reaching out for him, running toward him as fast as he could. His eyes were wide and his pupils were small, every step he took seeming to register as slow motion in Max’s own eyes.

Isaac found a spectral sword in his shoulder, digging into him and twisting. It took a few seconds for the pain to hit him, but when it did it came in wave after wave of a white hot burning sensation. If he screamed, he didn’t hear it. He landed on his back with the rogue on top of him, the back of his already-injured calf breaking open again. He certainly screamed that time, cringing and trying his best to keep his leg off the ground. The dirt road made the pain even worse, probably seeping into the cut. He was starting to regret keeping it a secret from Clara. He’d honestly thought it was healing fine, but it’d cracked open so easily.

Isabel knocked the rogue spectral off of him with a swing of her umbrella, hitting him in the side and knocking the air completely out of him. Isaac would have laughed at the sounds of sputtering next to him had he not been in so much pain. “Yikes. He got you pretty good, huh?”

He grunted as Isabel helped him to sit up, wincing when his calf hit the ground again. “No shit.”

“Isaac!” He internally rolled his eyes when he heard Spender’s scolding voice again. Even from across the battlefield it was exhausting.

Hardy bent down by his side, snickering and messing with his hair. Isaac batted his hand away. “Looks like we’ve only got a few more left t’ go. You good?”

As Ed and Isabel offered him their hands, he nodded and grasped them firmly. He would be fine. He’d powered through worse than a split calf in his time going solo. The hole in the shoulder was new and excruciatingly painful, but he was sure it’d be fine too. His eyes found Max on the other end near Spender, blocking each and every hit his own personal rogue tried to land with his bat. With a swing and a backflip away, Max pointed his weapon at his enemy. Isaac watched as huge chunks of metal rose from his backpack and went flying at the other spectral. Some hit the face, others hit the chest and more private areas. The rogue wheezed and fell to their knees, then to their side as they curled up in a ball and cried. Isaac’s immediate thought was to tell Max how impressive that’d been (and how good he looked doing a backflip), but he swallowed it down. That could wait until later, when Clara was safe and not hanging twenty feet in the air from an orange duffle bag in a nest of vines.

Spender pinned one of the rogues to a broken house, piercing his clothes with obnoxiously shining stars. Once he readjusted his glasses, he turned to check on his students. “How are we holding up, children?”

“Well, Isaac got his ass handed to him.” Hardy only laughed when Spender’s gaze narrowed. “I think we’re all good though, right?”

Ed twirled his hand-drawn bo staff in the air before bringing it down roughly upon the head of a rogue that’d been trying to sneak up on them. The club watched the enemy fall with varying degrees of disinterest. “Yeah!” Ed called. “I think we’re all good here!”

 

The first thing Clara saw when they’d unzipped the duffle bag was a wide-eyed Ed, a trying-his-best-to-be-approachable Spender, and a proud bloodlust-satisfied Isabel. She didn’t seemed too fazed, at first almost looking confused and dazed and numb. It reminded him of when he told her he was a spectral, how she’d appeared so stoic behind those big black glasses. He thought about how excited she was that he’d told her and how she’d jumped at the chance to be his spectral wingman. It brought a smile to his face as a reminder that she was his faithful friend. Isaac watched as Clara blinked up at them, rubbed her eyes, looked around, and continued to until her gaze settled on him. She hadn’t even thanked the group or straightened her clothes. She bolted straight for Isaac’s arms and he gladly took her in like the speeding bullet she was. He swung her around and around until he was sure they were both dizzy and he knew he could barely stand. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around his neck he could hardly breathe, but from the sound of her muffled sobbing, she couldn’t either. He nuzzled into her neck the same way she nuzzled into his, breathing in the sweet smell of vanilla and strawberries. His wounds were still aching and bleeding like no-one’s business, but his chest finally untightened and all of the tension he hadn’t even realized he was feeling just evaporated. The club watched on, Isabel and Ed looking almost nostalgically (they probably understood what he was feeling better than anyone), Spender wide-eyed but smiling, and Max just as stone-faced as usual. Hardy approached their hug cautiously before bringing them both into his arms and squeezing them for dear life. Isaac could have sworn he heard Hardy crying. Isaac squeezed his eyes shut. He might have been crying, too.

 

“Eggnog?” Isaac glanced down at Max’s outstretched hand, eyes falling hungrily onto the sweet creamy treat inside the open cup. Without so much as a second glance, he’d grabbed it and downed half of it. He hadn’t realized he’d been so thirsty.

“Didn’t I just have a drink before I came out here?”

“You came out here a good thirty minutes ago. Clare’s throwing a fit.”

Isaac snorted at the irritation in Max’s tone. “So she forced you to come out here?”

Max shrugged and leaned over the wooden railing that lined the porch, very similar to the way Isaac had been for what was apparently a half an hour. “She didn’t force me to do anything.” Isaac smiled and took another sip from the cup.

Clara’s guest list had stretched a little larger than she’d originally thought it would have. Upon being saved, she’d felt unbelievably guilty and invited the entire club to her huge Christmas Bash. While Isaac was originally opposed to the idea, still nervous about where he was with the club, things had shaped up rather well. They actually seemed like they wanted to talk to him, which was both weird and stimulating? Spender had declined the invitation, instead deciding to spend the holiday with his beautiful fiancé- whom Isaac was still surprised existed. Isabel and Clara got along surprisingly well, Isabel being far more knowledgeable than Isaac about everything involving the paranatural world (“Hey, she already knows we exist. Might as well keep her from getting herself killed”). Hardy was happy to try to teach Ed about basketball, which more than once that night had ended with a broken lamp and/or vase. He smiled at the memory of Ed frantically sweeping the broken glass under the rug and Hardy replacing the decorations with Christmas presents.

Things had been odd between himself and Hardy. He almost seemed to keep his distance compared to before, not enough to upset Isaac but enough for him to notice. When they spoke, he didn’t really flirt anymore- not with body language, anyway. Hardy still flirted plenty, but he kept it all in his talk. When Isaac tried to speak to him about what they really were, he’d dodge the question. Of course, that would have been fine if Isaac still wasn’t sure what he was feeling.

But he was sure.

He and Hardy were friends, maybe even best friends, but he was not in love.

Isaac glanced at Max from the side, but quickly averted his eyes to the falling snow again. He downed the rest of the eggnog, desperately wishing there’d been some form of alcohol stirred in, and set the cup on the railing to his right.

He and the rest of the trio hadn’t attended any parties since the whole kidnapping thing happened. Part of it was because Isaac just didn’t feel like going, the other part because he was worried about what Max would think. It was stupid, and he knew that. It wasn’t like he and Max were together. He didn’t have any say in anything Isaac did, but still. He couldn’t get that piercing gaze out of his mind; the way Max looked in the freezing cold with the most attentiveness he’d ever seen in anyone. Going to a party and having a few drinks just seemed like a betrayal of sorts, even though he’d never promised Max anything. He hadn’t even been sure they were friends until a few weeks ago. Point was, it was all very complicated. Things seemed cool between them at the moment, and he didn’t wanna ruin it by showing up at the convenience store with another hangover.

“You know, I told Spender about you drinking.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow, not sure if he was feeling amused or inquisitive. “Did you really?”

Max nodded, eyes trailing each snowflake that fell at the end of his nose. It hadn’t started snowing until earlier that week, which was almost a relief. Seeing the first flake fall was like a huge payoff. Mayview had dealt with the temperature without getting to build a snowman, but by New Year’s they’d be figure skating. “He was pretty upset. Was gonna call your parents and everything.”

He wasn’t surprised to hear Spender’s instinctual teacher alarm had gone off. He’d seen kids get suspended for less. Part of him wanted to believe it was out of genuine concern, but only time would tell if it had. Isaac shook his head. “I got drunk literally one time. You guys are acting like it’s a habit.”

Max gazed at him from the side, brows furrowing and eyes narrowing. “We know it isn’t! We were worried it would become one.”

Isaac hummed and reached out to catch some snowflakes in the palm of his hand, watching them melt against his warmer skin. “I’m a good kid. I just needed to get a little, you know, out of my comfort zone is all.”

“That was a little too uncomfortable too fast, if you ask me.”

“Okay, well I didn’t ask you.”

They were silent for a while after that, watching as the snow grew heavier in the air. More snowflakes fell together, some landing atop the street lights and some at the mercy of the cold winter breeze that swept the city. Isaac inhaled, basking in the sweet scent of Christmas trees and gingerbread. It was his favorite time of year, after all. Eighth grade Isaac hadn’t expected to spend Christmas Eve at a party- a party he hadn’t attended as his parent’s plus one. He was happy, but some part of him told him he should have been happier. He had two amazing friends, a chance to patch things up with the club, and another three more years to enjoy it all. It just felt like something was missing.

“You’re right. Deering’s not a horrible guy, but I still think he’s a bad influence.”

“What, are you my mom now?”

“No,” Max elbowed Isaac’s arm, almost knocking it off the railing “just a neighborly concerned citizen who’s had it up to here with these darn hooligans interrupting my ‘quiet time’.” With an impersonation of what Isaac assumed was a senior citizen Max knew uncomfortably well, whatever tension that had been there before was gone.

Isaac elbowed him right back, knocking Max’s arm off the railing in turn. With a smile on his face, he bantered back. “You didn’t seem too concerned when I saw you at the corner store.”

“Tell that to Deering.”

Isaac frowned and tilted his head, marking the return of Max’s perpetual smart-ass smirk. The batter gestured to the window they stood a few feet in front of, probably in Hardy’s general area. “He didn’t get a black eye out of nowhere, Isaac.”

“What?” Isaac’s jaw dropped. That made no sense! And yet, it made perfect sense. That was why Hardy didn’t want to talk about it, why they wouldn’t stop glaring at each-other… Isaac glanced into the window behind him. Hardy sat next to Clara at the piano, looking like he was playing magnificently as she sang along. Isaac knew better, though. The guy was hitting every key he could and barely contributing to the probably-just-as-awful duet. Isabel and Ed watched from their spots at the fireplace, laughing and probably heckling their talentless entertainers.

That would also explain how Hardy knew Max was worried about him.

“I, uh, wow. You punched him- for me?”

Max shrugged him off, but it was his own way of saying ‘yeah’. Isaac let the small smile that was practically bursting in his cheeks grow, turning back to lean over the railing again. He wasn’t necessarily happy about Max punching Hardy, because Hardy in no way deserved it, but it was kind of exhilarating. Max punched somebody- actually got physical with an older and bigger human being- because he was worried about Isaac. Max was worried about him. While he’d known it before, the concept hadn’t really clicked in his mind until that moment.

Maybe he’d get over Max, eventually, with some time and patience. Yeah, it bothered him. Unrequited love always kinda sucked, but thinking Max hadn’t even cared about him before sucked even worse. Knowing that they were friends was good enough. Knowing Max would fight somebody for him was good enough. Wherever they would go with whatever it was they had, it was going to be good enough. He couldn’t be in love with Max forever; it had to die sometime. When that time came, Isaac was going to be ready to welcome it with open arms. He’d been through hell and back lately, wondering if he was straight, fretting over being abandoned and used and hated, being terrified it would happen all over again- he was through that. A new year always meant some change, and he had a feeling he was going to do even more growing next year.

Isaac smiled at the sight of snow falling from overburdened trees as he took another whiff of the Christmas scent that fell all around him. It was intoxicating, mystifying even. Isaac let the biggest smile he’d had since he was a small child, dancing in a retirement home to old grainy music he could name on the first notes played. Maybe he’d become better for enduring that journey?

Isaac took in the sight of the starry sky from beyond the grey clouds above them, blinking at each flake that landed on his head. He was so enamored, in fact, that he almost didn’t notice Max kissing him on the cheek.

Isaac felt the snow on his face melt, either by the heat of his skin or at the mercy of Max’s lips. His fingers grazed the place he’d felt it, eyes blinking as if it was some form of a snow mirage. Did those exist? He looked at Max, who was looking very disgruntled and red in the face. He tried to think of something to say- anything- but his mind was filled with questions and wishes and hopeless imaginary scenarios. That was why Max must have taken it upon himself to lean up, grab Isaac by the back of his neck, and kiss him again, this time on the lips where Isaac felt the warmest.

Isaac closed his eyes and reached up to wrap his fingers around Max’s wrist, enjoying the feel of the hand at the back of his bare skin. They parted for air, eyes locking. They held each-other there, eyes lidded and throats dry in contrast to their wet lips. Max kissed him again, and the excitement came rushing through their bodies in intense spurts, pulsing under their skin and thumping hard against their ribs. Isaac’s hands fell to Max’s chest where they gripped the strings of his hoodie and he hadn’t even known they’d moved. His eyes were shut as tightly as humanly possible, just so he could soak in every last minute and revel in every single sensation that was raging and screaming in his stomach. Max definitely felt more relaxed when their bodies melded together, no tension- just warmth and raw passion. Isaac’s fingers searched for something more to cling to, tugging at Max’s hoodie before he settled to wrap his arms around Max’s neck. They parted again, and the next time they kissed they met each-other halfway. Max massaged Isaac’s head and neck with one hand, squeezing his shoulder in the other. Isaac gasped and parted his lips, pulling Max closer so that he could feel his body and not just its heat. It was like holding another piece of himself; they fit together, every kiss and every embrace a moment where he felt a little more complete. Max pushed Isaac lightly, pressing him against the wooden railing and running circles into Isaac’s coat as he took the opportunity to deepen their kiss. Isaac’s calf hit the back of the railing and he hissed in pain, breaking the kiss to set a hand on it. The hole in his shoulder was well on its way to healing, thanks to Zarei, but he’d failed to get a word in about the other gaping wound on his body.

“Sorry” Max was huffing and puffing, leaving large bouts of fog where his breath roamed “I didn’t think I was being rough.”

“You weren’t! I just” Isaac grunted “probably have an infection is all.”

Max frowned and bent down to get a look, tugging the bottoms of Isaac’s jeans up. “An infection? Oh my god Isaac, like, a chunk of your leg is gone! What happened?”

Isaac thought about it, winced, and shrugged as blamelessly as he could. “It might’ve happened” Max looked up at him “on one of my solo missions” Max began to frown “and I might’ve lied to Clara about having it because I thought it wasn’t that bad and I was genuinely terrified of her trying to stitch me up?”

“Isaac…”

“Please don’t kill me.”

Instead of bludgeoning Isaac to death with his bat, like he could have done, Max reached up and squeezed Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac blinked, not quite sure if he was surprised to see an earnest expression upon Max’s burning red face. “Tell me you won’t do this anymore. Tell me you’re done going solo.”

Isaac mustered up a smile, as best he could with as nervous as he was. “I promise.”

Max shook his head. “No, don’t promise me. Just say you won’t.”

“Max,” his awkward smile melted into a genuine one, as simple as could be. Did Max just have that effect on him? He wasn’t sure, but wouldn’t have minded if that were the case. “You’re looking at the newest member of the activity club.” That must have been exactly what Max wanted to hear, because their lips were crashing together the same as before. Isaac hummed again and shut his eyes, leaving his hands to relax at Max’s chest.


End file.
